STASIS: Part 3: Restart

by E. W. Osborne

  Julian grabbed her wrist. “Please stay.”

  She bent to collect her purse and the open bottle of wine. “I’ll go make my own fun. Maybe I’ll go find that boss of yours and see if he’s a better time than you.” It wasn’t so much of a threat as a weary idea. Still, he couldn’t take that chance.

  An animalistic rage flared in his chest at even the thought of her being alone with Kieran Hart. “Don’t.”

  She twisted her hand away and searched his gaze. “Why? Why shouldn’t I? Give me one good reason.”

  He opened his mouth to tell her everything, but a ding from the computer stopped him short. “Promise me you’ll never go near that man without me there.”

  Harriet didn’t agree or fight. He got the distinct feeling he didn’t give her the reason she’d been looking for. With the bottle hanging limply at her side, she walked out of the room and unit without another word.

  He pushed her out of his mind as he refocused.

  Authentication process commencing…

  Julian readied himself, balancing his cuff on the desk in front of him, fingers poised over the keyboard. It wasn’t a taxing or particularly difficult sequence, but it required precision. If either of them mistyped or mistimed their responses, they’d be locked out for over an hour. Flub it up a second time and they’d have to wait six before trying again. If his father was irritated by Harriet’s interruption, he didn’t want to consider how fucked off he’d be if the authentication didn’t go through.

  His cuff buzzed. He had ten seconds to correctly enter the code.

  JR8vI99#

  The system accepted it and bounced the next direction to his father. A moment later, he was back in the hot seat.

  86zJ0pP+

  For a moment he froze, reading the zero as a capital ‘O’. With the timer clicking down in his mind, he quickly typed out what he thought was the right answer, breathing in relief as it was accepted.

  Authentication complete.

  He closed the conversation, knowing his father would never go so far as to thank him. As he watched the muted screens of discussion and terror, he thought about his half-brother Jamie. Somewhere, on the other side of the world, he was going on about his daily life while their father meddled around in his brain. It made him feel… something. Embarrassed, pity, another emotion he didn’t have a word for. But in any case, the moment was short-lived.

  I suppose that’s the risk you take when you hand over your authentication to someone else.

  Julian rocked back in the chair, threading his long fingers together behind his head.

  If only I didn’t need him to break into a Seed… imagine the fun I’d have then.

  Just as he was about to walk away and head off to bed, a final message popped up on the screen.

  And take down that ridiculous website you’re running. Project Stasis… really? It’s an embarrassment.

  Chapter Eight

  Poughkeepsie, NY

  July 10th

  Home. It felt fucking amazing to be home. Without opening his eyes, Neil took a deep breath and allowed a sense of childish contentment to sink deeper. The sounds of his mom making breakfast in the kitchen downstairs, the low hum of the shower down the hall, even the dog barking in the distance… it was good to be home.

  After the first full day and night being back in the house, he started to believe he could find a sense of peace again. They’d all decided to keep the events in the woods, and how they got there, from their parents. There wasn’t anything they could do to help and considering the state of the world, it would only make things worse. They had enough to worry about.

  Keeping that secret was bittersweet. On one hand, Neil wanted nothing more than to spill everything out on the table. He was desperate for the times when his parents would hug him, tell him that everything was going to be alright. Hell, he missed the age when his problems were so minor they’d be able to fix them outright. On the other hand, handling it all his own felt decidedly adult. It was a burden he was happy to carry to keep them blissfully ignorant.

  All I want to do is enjoy the summer. Maybe I’ll work on a game or something in my spare time, find a job and save up for next semester.

  And it hit him. There might not be a next semester. He clung to that sense of peace as a dark cloud of reality threatened to cast its shadow. Those few blissful moments were the first he’d felt in weeks. He wasn’t obsessing over the website or wondering if a black van was going to pull up and make him disappear. Reality has a way of being irritatingly insistent.

  “Unghhh,” he groaned, rolling over and pressing his face into the pillow.

  It was both a blessing and curse that the university hadn’t been in touch. As they’d rounded the corner into his neighborhood, a part of him had wanted the car to keep driving. He wasn’t ready to deal with the fallout of blowing his entire semester, possibly the whole year. When his parents greeted him with open, loving arms, he figured they were waiting a day before laying into him. When they never called him downstairs for a dreaded family meeting, he thought they might’ve been playing mind games. The guilt of it became this lurking thought in the back of his mind. Every time they answered a call or email or received a delivery, he tensed up. After two days, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could go on. Thankfully, a quick trip up to Canada to collect his grandmother would provide a break. They were leaving that night.

  It was ludicrous worrying about classes and grades, so Neil clung to the few positives he could see. He and the others were alive and relatively unscarred. Whatever attention he’d brought down on them had thankfully shifted away, even after plunging head-first into the thick of it. As long as he kept his head down and nose out of trouble, there was nothing to say he couldn’t skate out the other side with his parents none the wiser. Whatever facility they’d landed themselves in was the exact wrong place to be, but they’d escaped.

  The warm bed and comforting sounds of the house around him lulled him back into a fitful sleep. He was still getting used to sleeping without Dreamscapes. It was an odd sensation, but Neil tried to embrace the spontaneous dreams his subconscious created for him.

  That last few nights, he suffered through variations of the same dream. He was back in that building, trapped in that hallway, cornered and staring at the beautiful blonde. Her eyes locked on him and no matter where he moved in the dream, he felt them. Sometimes she would twirl the blue lock of hair between her fingers, other times she’s snarl and launch herself at the glass. One time, she stood on the bed and stripped off the white hospital gown. Every variation left him soaked in sweat, panting and disoriented.

  Some mornings, after sleeping for nine or ten hours, he could lazily doze in and out of his dream world, picking up where he left off. These fleeting moments felt like, if he stretched himself just a little further, he could control the wispy direction of the dream like a conductor. It was like pushing smoke around, but on the very edge of possible.

  A hard knock jolted him awake. He pushed up from the bed and whipped his head around, first looking at the door then to the window. A dark figure loomed agains the bright morning light. With a cry, he kicked out, trying to push away from the window and connecting with nothing but air.

  “Let me in, you idiot. Someone’s gonna call the cops if they see me hanging out here.”

  It wasn’t the secret group of men in black. It wasn’t a government team busting through his window. The insulting voice could’ve only belonged to one person.

  “Maggie. What the fuck are you doing?”

  He pushed the sash window open and moved out of the way. Maggie crawled through the gap onto his bed with a satisfied grin.

  “I should’ve been a burglar.” She looked around the room as if she’d never seen it before.

  Neil was suddenly aware he was wearing only old boxers. Despite the stuffy summer heat coming in, he pulled the blankets up.

  “Again, I have to ask, what the fuck are you doing here?”

  “I wanted t
o talk,” she shrugged.

  Neil ran one hand through his hair and stifled a yawn. “I’m gonna have to call the repair guys, then.”

  “For what?”

  “I’m assuming the door downstairs is broken, otherwise, why they hell are you coming in through my window?”

  Maggie’s smirk grew into a full grin. She bounced off the bed and strolled across the room. “I don’t know. I was coming over to see you. Your parents were leaving and I didn’t want to get into a whole thing with them. Then I saw your window and, well… the rest is history.” Neil gave her a reproachful look, so she went on the defensive. “What? I’ve never done it before!”

  “And it won’t happen again, right? It’s bad enough I’m jumping at shadows. I don’t need to add you to the list.”

  “That’s what I’m here to talk about. What do you think about trying to get rid of the shadows altogether?”

  Even just talking about all this stuff made Neil’s skin crawl. He resisted the urge to check his backyard for any scary, lurking people. “What are you talking about?”

  Her bright eyes flashed as she pushed the heft of her curly hair to the side. Neil thought, not for the first time, that she seemed surprisingly well-adjusted after the miscarriage and almost dying. It made him a little suspicious, like she was a ticking bomb ready to blow at the wrong moment.

  “Hypnos. He got in touch.”

  Neil rolled his eyes and moved to get out of bed, again remembering he was practically naked. With a shy glance up, Maggie seemed to understand. With a snort, she tossed him a pair of jeans from the floor and turned her back.

  “The reporter, the black chick with the awesome eyes, remember? The one from the city?”

  “I vaguely remember…”

  “She wants to come interview us.”

  His body flooded with adrenaline. “No. No way. I’m not going online and—”

  “Ah, you pussy. It can be off the record. She can change your name, whatever. She’ll protect you.”

  Neil shook his head. “Not to sound like a drama queen, but no one can protect us.” He pulled on a shirt and paused in the doorway, listening to confirm his parents had actually left. “We’ve only just dropped off their radar.”

  Maggie continued pummeling him on the way down the stairs to the kitchen. The tiles were cold against the soles of his feet, refreshing given the promising summer day outside. He tipped the last of the warm coffee into a cup and leaned against the island. After years of friendship, it was easy and almost natural to ignore Maggie’s droning.

  His mind drifted back to when they were kids in those first few days of summer. It was a distant yet familiar memory. With the whole summer stretched out before them, the days long, their time unscheduled, anything felt possible. For a second, one fleeting moment, he clung to that positive sensation.

  “Remember when you broke Danny Rosenkrans’ nose?” Neil asked wistfully.

  Maggie sputtered and looked at him as though he’d lost his mind. “When I—”

  “And then both teams cleared the benches, like we were in the big leagues or something.”

  A curl touched the corner of her mouth as she followed the wisp of his memory. “He cried like a baby.”

  “You broke his nose,” he laughed.

  “He deserved it! He grabbed my tits.”

  “You were trying to steal home.”

  “And he needed to grab my tits for that?” Neil chuckled into his coffee mug as she added, “His nose is still crooked, you know.”

  “I haven’t seen him since graduation.”

  She shrugged one shoulder, almost bashfully. “I think it gives him a rugged look, if I do say so myself.” She cocked her head to the side and squinted. “Where’d that come from?”

  “I don’t know. Something about you, here, the summer. Made me think of it.”

  A comfortable silence fell between them as they drifted away in long-forgotten memories. The nostalgia made Neil forget all about his rude awakening and the reason for her visit. That is, until she shattered the moment.

  “So?”

  He was startled by the shift in tone, going from friendly to snotty in a second flat.

  “What?”

  “You going to talk to this woman or am I gonna have to play the dead baby card?”

  Neil’s jaw fell open. He’d known her for a long time, yet she still managed to surprise him on a regular basis. “Did you seriously just—”

  She crossed her arms like it was nothing. “It’s still in the deck. I can still use it.”

  “I can’t believe you’d actually joke about…”

  Maggie let the conversation hang in the air for a moment before sighing. “It’s not like it really bugs me. It wasn’t a baby. It was a bundle of cells that weren’t going to survive anyway. It’s probably a good thing it all happened considering it might’ve killed me.”

  “Mags, millions of people—”

  She groaned and held out her arms as if acquiescing the point. “Yes. It was a terrible thing and the people responsible should be drawn and quartered.” She slammed the flat of her hand on the island with a loud smack. “That’s why I’m here. You can help.”

  Neil finished his coffee, bracing himself for the incoming emotional manipulation. “I seriously doubt that.”

  “Well, it’s not up to you, is it? She’s got genuine reach. You know she and Hypnos have personally save millions of people.”

  “Millions?” he asked dubiously.

  “She was the one who originally broadcast how to shut off the Seeds. People listen to her. And more importantly, Hypnos trusts her, so I know she’s gotta be a good egg.”

  “She’ll come up here? Cause I really don’t think my parents are gonna be too excited about me leaving again before school starts.”

  “If school starts,” she snorted. She met his gaze guiltily, as if knowing she’d touched a sensitive nerve. “She’s coming up here. All you have to do is talk to her, tell her what you know.”

  Neil’s mind immediately locked onto the girl from the secret compound. They hadn’t spoken about it since escaping, but he couldn’t stop thinking about her. The way she’d reached for him, the painful awareness in her eyes. It was heartbreaking, haunting. He replayed it in his mind over and over, wishing he could’ve done something differently. Maybe now was his chance.

  “Okay.”

  Maggie opened her mouth to argue but shut it straight away. She frowned and took a step back, surprised. “Okay?”

  “Okay. That’s what you wanted to hear, right?”

  “Well, yeah, but I didn’t think you’d cave so quickly. I had this whole thing ready…”

  Neil’s fake laugh echoed off the kitchen cabinets. “Don’t know what to tell you. You’re a convincing woman. You should be a lawyer instead of a doctor.”

  “Yeah, okay,” she replied with a sarcastic laugh of her own, hands roughly groping her breasts. “At the rate the world is going, I may have to rely on an even older profession just to survive.”

  Chapter Nine

  New York City, NY

  July 13th

  Kristine flipped through the news sites, scanning the headlines and moving on. She never thought she’d wish for bad news, but that’s almost what she was doing. It’d been nearly two weeks since the mass miscarriages, but it felt like months. No news was good news, especially recently, but these doldrums were far worse than the chaos. She knew in her gut this whole thing wasn’t over. Waiting for the next strike was agonizing.

  Tensions had climbed to a fevered pitch. The world was holding its breath, waiting for the next horrible moment, not daring to believe it could be over. The murders, suicides… everything had just stopped. She wanted to take credit for it, but knew her deactivation video couldn’t be the entire reason, especially after the backlash.

  On top of it all, a heat wave gripped the entire Eastern Seaboard, driving people into the city streets for a gasp of cooler air. Even in the best of times, Kristine knew cri
me rates spiked during hot weather. The city was a pile of dry tinder waiting for a lightning strike. Most of the gun violence and robberies were north of their unit, but the past couple nights had seen mobs of looters out on their streets. These were tiny sparks. She feared the fire.

  Inside, she was panicking. On the outside, she tried to appear as calm as she could. Otherwise, Christopher would never leave.

  She lounged on the sofa, tablet in her lap, floor fan at full blast blowing her hair back. Christopher moved around the room collecting his belongings. It’d been over a week since his last trip upstate for work. It was difficult to admit, but she was itchy for him to go. Not only did she need the space to think and plan, but she wanted to try video calling Alex. The communications to anywhere outside of the US had become unreliable. The messages didn’t always go through and when they did, many times the text came back garbled.

  “I’m really sorry I have to go,” he said for the tenth time. “It’s just, we really need the money with the…” He trailed off, unwilling to even utter the word ‘baby’ anymore.

  “I’ll be fine, I swear,” she replied sweetly, hiding any irritation from her voice. In the back of her mind, she was pleading for him to get moving so she could leave too.

  “I wish you could come with me, but where they put us up isn’t really nice. Plus, I don’t think they’ll have any extra beds, at the moment.”

  Kristine wanted to ask how the construction job could even go forward, given the state of the world, but that opened up a much longer conversation she wanted to avoid.

  “It’s okay, babe, really. Two days, you’ll be back home.”

  He paused in the middle of zipping up his bag. “I want you to think about moving out of the city.”

  “You know I don’t like the suburbs.”

  “No, I mean out. Way out. Dirt road, can see the stars kind of out.”