“Where are you taking me?” she said, as both the wall panel and the elevator door slid closed behind her.
The woman pushed a button marked B, and the elevator started down. “It’s better for you to just see it.”
“Aren’t you worried about the security cameras? And didn’t you just log your handprint?”
Another rumble came from outside, the sound muffled inside the elevator.
The woman rolled her eyes. “You let me worry about that stuff. I know what I’m doing.”
“Dr. Hayden will wonder why I’ve gone,” said Jessica. “He told me to wait—”
The woman turned to Jessica and pointed a finger at her face. Jessica stepped back against the elevator wall. “Let me worry about that!” But then the woman’s face softened, and she lowered her hand. “Look, I have someone here who can take care of the security footage, and I’ll talk to Hayden, tell him I showed you out.”
The elevator descended for what felt like several minutes. They were clearly going to a basement level. When the doors finally slid open, they revealed another hallway lined with doors. Stale air slowly filled the elevator. For a second, Jessica felt a wave of dizziness and something like nausea. She shook her head.
While the other parts of the building had been well-lighted with skylights and LED lamps in the ceilings, here there were only two dark red lights to illuminate the hall. At the far end, a pale red glow shone through a window in one of the doors.
So much like the dull red light in the room with the dead pig.
“Look,” she said, stepping toward the panel of buttons and reaching for the one marked 1. “I need to go.”
The woman grasped her wrist before she could press the button. Jessica snatched her hand out of the woman’s grip and backed into the corner. A long time ago, Jessica’s sister had insisted on teaching her some self-defense, but she hadn’t practiced it in a long time. In her mind, she ran through some of the attacks that she could remember well enough to use now. But Jessica hated violence and hadn’t practiced much. She’d rather get beaten up than to do harm to someone else. That had been why she and her sister had fallen out. Jessica had taken it as a betrayal when her sister had joined the Marines.
“My girlfriend knows I’m here,” she said. “And I’m supposed to call her in a few minutes.”
“I don’t believe this,” said the woman, rolling her eyes again. She backed away from Jessica into the elevator’s opposite corner and leaned her shoulder against the wall. “You’re supposed to be the reporter who helped take down Vic Sanders. You stood up to Homeland Security about the Iranian refugees. You exposed racial biases at DHR. What the hell?”
Jessica shook her head from side to side as if that would cause the image of the pig to dissolve.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I got a death threat this morning. A bad one.”
She looked at the woman, hoping to see some sympathy there. Something to show her that she really was just paranoid. Something to tell her that she wasn’t in danger down here. But the woman’s mouth stretched into a disgusted smirk.
“We get death threats all the damn time here,” she said. “There was a bomb threat last week. One guy showed up here with an axe and tried to kill the receptionist last year. And—in case you didn’t notice—there is some pretty major shit going on outside right now. So grow a pair of ovaries—or balls. Shit.”
Jessica stared at her, for the first time in a long time feeling ashamed. She remembered hearing about the axe attack. And the threat on Agora this morning hadn’t been her first one, either. So why had this one rattled her so much?
“Who are you?” she said finally.
“I’m an obstetrician,” said the woman. The hard look on her face softened a little, and Jessica thought she saw a hint of the sympathy she had hoped for. “I work under Dr. Hayden. My name’s Havana Jimenez.”
She put out a hand, and Jessica took it. The grip was firm and the skin rough. These were worker’s hands. The gestured allowed her to calm down a little.
“But if you say that I talked to you or showed you any of this,” Havana said, “I’ll call you a damn liar. Come on.”
Taking a deep breath, Jessica followed her out of the elevator. The air inside the hallway seemed to... buzz as if with static electricity. Another wave of dizziness hit her, and there was something else, too. Voices. The sound came from one of the rooms at the other end of the hall, but Jessica couldn’t understand what it said. It sounded like someone trying to comfort a child.
“What is this?” she said.
Havana ignored the question, leading Jessica down the hall toward the voice and the sound of a baby whining.
This part of the building seemed less hypermodern than the rest—the doors all had old-style knobs. There were no keypads or handprint scanners here. The top half of each door was taken up by a window. Peering through these as she walked past, Jessica could see most of the rooms were empty except for desks, bare bookshelves, and office chairs. In some cases, the chairs were stacked on top of the desks. One room was completely empty except for a single floor lamp that stood next to the wall.
“Dr. Hayden is going to think that I... what, snuck around? Broke into this place?”
“No,” Havana said, stopping to face Jessica.
“Look, I’m sorry,” said Jessica, reading the woman’s exasperation. “This is just—”
Havana cut her off. “Hayden’s not going to think anything. I can’t explain. Just... you’ve got no reason to, but trust me. Okay?” She started down the hall again toward the door whose window glowed red.
“But—”
“Hush,” said the woman, stopping at a door. “Here we are.”
Jessica forced herself to breathe through another wave of nausea and disorientation, trying to push aside the thought that maybe there was some sort of gas down here to poison her or knock her out. But Hayden had said that he had a cloned nephew, after all, and he had read the piece about clone pedophilia.
Stop it, she told herself.
Havana opened the door, and Jessica gasped at what she saw. Not because of how shocking it was; in fact, the only word Jessica could think of for it was... ordinary. A woman in scrubs sat in a wooden glider—the kind of chair that Jessica’s grandmother had kept in her sitting room—breastfeeding a baby. The baby’s hand lay on the woman’s chest, the chubby fingers barely touching the soft skin of the woman’s throat.
“Oh,” said Jessica, her feet feeling stuck to the floor. She thought she ought to turn away, but she couldn’t stop looking at the baby as it sucked milk from the woman’s nipple. She’d never seen a baby nursing before. The sight struck her as both absolutely natural and alien at the same time.
“What is this?” said the woman. Her hand moved instinctively to cover the baby’s head. Jessica thought this was not modesty or shame on the woman’s part, though. She looked like she was preparing to protect the child from attack.
“Beck, this is Jessica Brantley, the reporter,” Havana said. “She needs to see.”
She stepped through the door and pulled Jessica inside by the wrist.
“Holy shit!” said the woman in the chair, a tremor of anger and panic rising in her voice. “You brought her down here?”
Though the baby continued to suck at the woman’s nipple, she—or he, Jessica couldn’t tell for sure—stirred. Clearly, she sensed Beck’s agitation. The hand on her chest flexed and tightened into a fist. Jessica’s stomach lurched with another wave of nausea. Havana’s hand went to her forehead, and Beck closed her eyes. They felt it, too.
“She needs to see,” said Havana, closing the door.
“I don’t understand,” said Jessica. “What’s going on here?”
Still not letting go of her latch on the woman’s breast, the baby grunted and began to whine a little.
“You were supposed to just give her the computer,” said Beck. She looked down at the baby and rubbed its hea
d tenderly. Her voice softened. “Don’t fuss.”
“She needs to see this for herself,” said Havana. “And I trust her, Beck.”
Havana looked at Jessica.
“I can tell from the things that you write and say that you care,” she said. “So I’m telling you now, you cannot tell anyone—not anybody—about this baby. If word gets out, I will know it was you, and I will find you and I really will kill you. Got it?”
“I don’t...” said Jessica. “Okay, but what the hell—”
“Not anyone,” she said, gripping Jessica’s shoulder tight. “Not your girlfriend, not your sister—”
“Okay,” said Jessica, shoving Havana’s hand off of her shoulder. “Wait, how do you know about my girlfriend and my sis—”
”Forget about that right now,” said Havana. “Swear it.”
“Yes, fine,” said Jessica. “Now what is this?”
“So that’s it?” said Beck. “Is she going to Pinky Swear now? What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking that if we want her to go after this story, she needs to see what’s really going on here for herself,” Havana said. “It’s not like this shit is easy to believe.” She looked at Jessica. “Not until you’ve seen it and... felt it.”
Beck looked at Jessica with hatred in her eyes. “I read your posts sometimes. And I’ve seen you on the news some. And I’m supposed to believe you can keep something like this a secret?”
Between her rising blood pressure and the weird tingling that seemed to fill the air around them, Jessica thought her head might split open. She looked at Havana. “I don’t know what in the hell I’m supposed to be keeping secret,” she said, all her fear turning into anger. “There are explosions going on outside, and you drag me down here to some underground bunker to see a breastfeeding baby and—”
“When you write about this,” said Beck, “when you tell the world about all of it, you leave this baby out of it. Understand?”
“Leave her out of what?”
“We don’t have time for this shit,” said Havana. She turned to the woman in the chair. “Take the nip away.”
Beck groaned. “Okay. Here goes.” She put her hand to her breast, but first she looked at Jessica. “You’d better get ready.” She pulled her nipple away from the baby.
At first, the infant simply looked up at the nurse’s face, and what struck Jessica was just how beautiful she was—and she felt sure now it was a girl. Her big eyes, round nose, fat cheeks—she might have been the most beautiful baby that Jessica had ever seen. And something about her looked almost familiar. Babies all tended to look alike to Jessica, but she couldn’t help thinking she’d seen this girl before. Not just a baby that looked like her, but her. This baby.
The child blinked sleepily at the woman, and for a moment Jessica wondered what they expected to happen.
But then it did happen. The baby started to whine, her arms trembling and her legs kicking. The electric feeling in the air suddenly rose to a sharp buzz and the nausea rolled through Jessica’s stomach. She staggered, grabbing the wall behind her for support, and a feeling of desperate panic gripped her heart. An image in her mind wiped out all other thoughts: the image of a woman’s face—Beck’s face—looking down at her.
“That’s enough!” shouted Havana. “Give it back!”
And almost instantly, the nausea, the panic, the electricity, the image of Beck’s face—all of it disappeared, leaving only a strange sense of... contentment? Relief?
Jessica let her back slide against the wall until she sat on the floor. She stared up at Beck and the baby, who now nursed enthusiastically at Beck’s breast.
“It’s not usually that bad,” said Havana, who offered her hand to Jessica. “Do you understand what it was?”
Jessica rubbed her face. “It’s like I was afraid or anxious... and now I feel... relieved.”
“That’s her,” said Beck, offering a tired smile and motioning her head toward the baby in her arms.
“Her?” said Jessica.
The woman nodded.
“What does that mean?” said Jessica. “What the hell does that mean?”
Her anger had subsided, but Jessica’s hands shook with exhilaration. At once she both wanted to get as far as she could from the baby and also to go to her, stroke her head, and tell her everything was going to be okay. Instead, she just took Havana’s hand and stood.
“What’s her name?” Jessica asked.
Havana and Beck exchanged glances.
“He named her Taylor,” said Havana.
“He?” said Jessica, looking at the baby’s familiar face. But she already knew.
Beck made a noise that was half-snort, half laugh. “Who do you think?”
12
Senator Jones-McMartin and General Tolbert were waiting with Dr. Simmons in the gymnasium when Bowen arrived with Celina. They stood next to a table where several television monitors had been set up for the experiment. Bowen groaned under his breath when he saw the two.
What the hell was wrong with them? They went on and on about secrecy and security and classification, but here they were yet again exposing their minds and however many decades of highly sensitive information they contained to the Anomalies. Bowen had warned the two of them the last time they came that it was dangerous for them to be too close.
Can I go ahead and have my assisted suicide early? he thought.
Bowen followed the orderlies, who rolled Celina along the south wall of the gym toward where Dr. Simmons waited with the senator and general. Where there should be a basketball court now stood a large building made of gray and brown prefab modules. It could be erected or disassembled in a matter of days, and the modules could be arranged in whatever configuration was needed. The senator had asked Bowen to make the structure as complicated as possible, so Bowen and Simmons had told the Corps of Engineers to give the building several wings and two stories. The goal was to create as difficult a maze as possible while still emulating the layout of real government and institutional buildings.
Several other officials—military and intelligence types—stood at various points around the gymnasium, their hands laced together in front of them. These were Tolbert’s people, Bowen assumed—people who had been brought in for security and to direct the volunteers to their positions in the test building.
“Good morning, Dr. Bowen,” said Jones-McMartin, an older woman with stone gray hair, which she wore in a tight braid that hung halfway down her back. “Sorry we didn’t let you know we were coming. We only just decided last week that we wanted to be here for this.”
She put out her hand and shook Bowen’s with a strong grip.
“Doctor,” said Tolbert, who also shook Bowen’s hand. The general was nearly a head shorter than Bowen and at least twenty years his senior. The combination of his raptor-like glare, flushed red alcoholic’s skin, and the walrus mustache was fairly unsettling. It reminded Bowen of his own father, who had been a neurosurgeon with the bedside manner of an IRS auditor.
The scolding that Bowen had been ready to deliver to the two of them died in his throat. He chided himself for being so easily intimidated. “Good morning,” he said. Then, in lieu of a reprimand, he managed only, “I’m surprised to see the two of you here.”
“I remember what you said about the security risks,” said Jones-McMartin. “But if the plans that we have for these...” She looked at Celina, who was strapped to her gurney, snoozing. “These remarkable people play out, we won’t ever have to worry about security risks again.”
Simmons, who hugged her tablet to her chest, nodded to Tolbert and Jones-McMartin. “I’m off now,” she said. “I’ll make preparations for the other Anomalies. Just send me a message when Celina finishes.”
“Sure thing,” said Bowen.
The general grunted, ignoring Simmons as she walked away. “This is quite a setup you’ve managed.” He gestured at the gymnasium.
“Well
, that was the idea, right?” said Bowen. “That’s why you asked me to tick off most of my people and take away one of their rec centers for a week?”
Jones-McMartin laughed in her tittering way. The general sniffed.
The orderlies had positioned Celina’s gurney so it faced the test building. Her head lay to one side.
“How long will she sleep?” said Tolbert.
Bowen turned to Khadijah and Bart. “Put a new sedative cartridge into her band and go ahead and wake her up.”
Khadijah’s eyes widened slightly, and she sighed. But she took a syringe from her coat pocket and removed the cover from the needle. The poor woman. The elevator hadn’t been the first time that Celina had tried to make her do something embarrassing.
For just a moment before Celina woke up, he allowed himself to indulge in the image of Khadijah that Celina had put into his head. Before now, he hadn’t really thought much of Khadijah—not sexually, anyway. She was pretty enough with her petite, girlish face and horn-rimmed glasses, but the uniform that the orderlies wore didn’t exactly accentuate sexy features. But the image that Celina had conjured in his mind had shown him just how exquisite Khadijah was.
Don’t you want to know whether or not she wants you to?
Actually, he had wanted to know, but he’d also had to shut down what Celina was doing before it got really bad.
Still, he really ought to see if he could make a Skin of Khadijah using security footage. That would bring him up to four custom Skins just from the people that he knew at the Institute. The more the merrier.
“She’s keeping physically fit,” said General Tolbert, who stared at Celina while Khadijah and Bart administered the drug to wake her. “You must let her out more than you used to.”
“No,” said Bowen, shaking off the thought of Khadijah looking at herself in the mirror. “We can’t. She takes every opportunity she can to... to mess with people. Make them do things they don’t want to do. So we only bring her out of her room for tests like this one. But she finds ways to exercise, anyway.”
The Way Out Page 6
