The crowd continued to grouse and Lizzie threw her hands up in defeat. “I told them to expect as much.”
Regina stepped forward, holding out a palm to calm the mob. “I understand what you’re all feeling – it’s a lot to ask. I, for one, am not convinced that a treaty will solve much of anything. But if our organization feels that a peaceful resolution is a possibility, then I will not stand against it. Please – think this over, talk to your loved ones, and consider all of the options. I will call another meeting in a few days’ time where you may all share your opinions with the group.”
That seemed to placate the rebels for the moment at least. Once they’d settled down, Regina shared a few logistics to conclude the meeting. “We’re only a couple hours from our destination now – our new base, Raptor. When the train arrives in the city, a motorcade of rebel agents will be waiting to transport us to the base. We must move with all haste, as Paragon will be swiftly on our tails. Do not delay in exiting the train, and take no detours to the shuttle. In addition to the threat from Paragon, we also have not found conclusive evidence that the virus is no longer viable – Alessa and Isaac came back unaffected, but that may just have been luck. Touch only what you need to, and get to Raptor safely. Once we’re inside, we should be out of harm’s way, for a time, at least.
“I’m certain many of you had sleepless nights last night, as did I, so take these remaining hours to rest so that you’re ready for the final leg of our journey. Thank you.”
The room swelled once again with the sound of voices as the rebels began to file out, and those who’d been asked to move to other cars during the meeting funneled back in. Janie pulled Alessa and Isaac aside where they could talk under the clatter of the crowd.
“What was Regina saying about the virus? Didn’t Lizzie tell her we’re all vaccinated?” Her dark eyes looked critically between Isaac and Alessa.
Alessa nodded. “Yeah, that was weird. Maybe Lizzie never told her that part? Either that, or Regina’s just keeping it quiet for some reason… I can’t imagine why, though.”
Isaac shook his head. “I can’t believe Lizzie’s the traitor who got us ambushed.”
“Wait, you got ambushed?” Janie demanded.
Isaac had forgotten that Janie was locked up ever since he and Alessa had left – he guessed Alessa hadn’t mentioned that to her yet.
Alessa nodded. “Yeah, not long after we left Isaac’s set. It was a close call…”
“Yup. That’s where Alessa got her new ‘do.” He fluffed a piece of her hair, smiling.
“What?” Janie questioned.
“Never mind,” Alessa sighed. “I’ll explain later.” She turned to Isaac. “I guess I can’t really blame her if she was under interrogation – especially with everything they’ve put her through. Maybe that’s why they decided to make her their messenger, since she was being cooperative.”
Janie was still eyeing Alessa. “I thought your hair was shorter…”
Alessa laughed. “Please, we have bigger things to worry about.”
Isaac certainly couldn’t argue with that. If the rebels refused to surrender – and he was almost certain they would – the next few months were shaping up to be pretty lively, at the least.
He put his arms around Alessa and Janie’s shoulders, pulling them both in tight. Alessa smiled up at him, her green eyes sparkling – two emeralds bathed in fire – and he knew that the woman he loved, and all the fight in her heart, was back for good.
“I hope you ladies have fastened your belts,” he grinned. “I’ve got a feeling we’re going to war.”
38. SCHEME
The Developer switched off the audio recording and greeted the other Engineers with a self-satisfied smirk. “Well, looks like everything is going according to plan.”
“According to plan?” the General sneered in his usual rasp. “We just let 800 rebels waltz off the compound, and you heard their reaction to the girl’s offer. What are we supposed to do now?”
The Developer released an exasperated sigh – he was growing tired of having to spell out every little thing to this group. “Now, we wait. We have them exactly where we want them.”
“And how is that?” the General argued, his black eyes narrowed defiantly.
“They think we’re weak. They think they have the power here. They also think that Phoenix is on their side…” He grinned wickedly. “But we know better.”
“B-but how do you know for sure?” the Economist interjected, nervously smoothing his hair into its ridged side part. “How do you know she’s convinced? And that she’ll stay loyal – especially after… e-everything she’s been through.”
How many times did he have to explain? “First off,” the Developer quipped. “As far as she knows, she hasn’t been through anything, at least not at our hands. The stoning memory sequence worked like a charm –”
The General grinned. “You’re welcome. Can’t say I didn’t enjoy that.” He flexed his knuckles. “The bitch had it coming,” he added, running a finger across his scarred lip.
The Developer gave the General a scolding look. “– and any past transgressions I wiped from her mind while we implanted the experience of the stoning. So Phoenix knows only what we want her to know, and thinks only what we want her to think. Which means she’ll do only what we want her to do. Understand?”
“And what’s your plan if someone reminds her of what actually happened? Of the bordello?” the Doctor asked politely, smoothing a wrinkle out of his long white coat.
The Developer shrugged. “That’s the beauty of the selective perception tool – she’ll simply forget it a few moments later. And then our little Phoenix will be back in action.” And Regina won’t know what hit her, he thought to himself. It was really a brilliant plan – even if Phoenix failed to win back the rebels, the blow of her betrayal would devastate Regina. No matter what happened, they were poised to tear down the rebels from the inside out.
The Draftsman leaned forward. “So it sounds like the transmitter is working?” he commented.
“Like a charm,” the Developer confirmed. “We can hear every word that’s spoken in her presence, and her GPS location is updated every three seconds.” He dabbled a few fingers over the tablet on the desk in front of him and a screen lowered beside the conference table, a map showing one glowing red dot slowly making its way toward the nearest city center. “Looks like the rebels have almost reached their destination.”
“Explain to me again,” the General grumbled, “why we’re not meeting them there and crushing this rebellion once and for all?”
The Economist cleared his throat. “F-first of all, we don’t want to kill all those people, if we can avoid it. Their genes are, after all, integral to the continuation of our species.”
“Well –” the Developer interposed, “that’s not strictly true.”
The Doctor frowned. “Of course we’d like to preserve as much variety as possible –”
“– but we did build some redundancy into the algorithm, to account for accidental deaths and the like,” the Developer explained. “We knew that not everyone who was chosen would actually make it to the quarantine zone.” He’d been careful to account for that in the design. “And anyway, once we’re done with our plan, most of the rebels will return to us of their own accord. After they see who it is they’re working for.”
“Regina seems like a fair enough leader to me,” the Draftsman argued, fingering his beard. “How do you plan to turn them against her?”
“Oh, I don’t plan to do anything. But Phoenix, well, she just might be able to win them over. And when she shows up on our doorstep with half the rebel army in tow, that will be a more crushing blow to Regina than anything we could have dealt.”
The General still didn’t seem convinced. “And what happens when she fails, your Phoenix?”
The Developer rolled his eyes. Hadn’t they learned not to underestimate him by now? “Of course, I have a backup plan. In fact, Phoenix’s woul
d-be rescuer delivered it into Regina’s hands first thing this morning.”
“The power cell? From the hospital?” the Economist wondered aloud.
The Developer sat back, a gleeful smile spreading across his face. “Let’s not ruin the surprise, shall we?”
The room fell silent for a moment, everyone contemplating his strategy. The Doctor piped up with a question. “Did you end up telling her about the origins of the virus?”
The other three turned wide-eyed towards the Developer, waiting for an answer – he hadn’t shared that with them yet.
“I did,” he admitted.
“Why?” the Economist insisted. “They’ll never understand!”
The Developer shrugged. “If she tells them, it will only work to our favor – anger will make them sloppy, and I’m sure we can pull together some sort of evidence disproving the accusation if it ever makes its way back to Paragon. Either way, the confession served its purpose – Phoenix understands how dedicated we are to our cause, and we’ve won her to our side. Now she’ll do the rest.”
He waited for any final questions, but none arose. “Well, it looks like that’s settled. What else do we need to discuss?”
“There was some damage,” the Doctor groaned, “to the labs, during Phoenix’s exit. The rebel fighters destroyed all the blood samples from the immunity specimen.”
The Developer cursed. “Can we get more?”
“How?” the Doctor questioned. “She and her parents escaped with the rebels.”
“I told you we should never have let such a valuable asset out of our sight,” the General hissed.
The Doctor looked affronted. “And how were we supposed to know she had any significance to the rebels? They can’t possibly know who she is, what she means.”
The General glared accusingly at the Developer. “Well if your little Phoenix –” he spat the word like an expletive, “– tells them about the vaccine, they might just put two and two together. And then we’ll never get her back.”
“This is a problem,” the Doctor agreed. “We need the girl to find a cure. The vaccine is too powerful to administer to an infant. Every one we’ve tried it on has died. And the others all succumbed to the virus within days. I need more samples of her blood to continue my research.”
The Developer scowled at him. “If you’d just concentrated on developing the cure back when we discovered the girl like I asked, we wouldn’t be in this situation right now. But instead you let yourself get distracted by the memory alteration, and allowed this incredibly important investigation to drift by the wayside.”
The Doctor cleared his throat aggressively and held up his hand in defense. “If you remember, we didn’t know at the time how important the girl would become. We thought the vaccine would work on the newborns – there was no need for a cure. Not to mention, it’s not my fault that the rebellion became a bigger problem than we anticipated. You know we needed the memory technology to keep things under control. I can only do so much.”
The Developer sighed. “Fine. Let’s not rehash the past. I’ll think about how we can use Phoenix to get the girl to us. Who knows, maybe she’s already figured it out herself.”
The General snorted. “I doubt it.”
But the Developer quietly shook his head to himself. The General had a bad habit of overlooking his enemies’ talents. Some sad defense mechanism, the Developer guessed – he ignored the strengths of others to blind himself to his own shortcomings in comparison. Indeed, all the General saw when he looked at Phoenix was a pretty little plaything.
But the Developer saw more. Phoenix may be young, and she may be a woman, but she was smart. That was why he had chosen her.
The Economist uttered a small cough. “There’s another thing…” He cleared his throat. “How about the issues with, uh, those… mutants.”
The Developer groaned. He was sick of hearing about this. “What issue?” he replied. “Just keep tossing them outside the gates – it’s the easiest way to dispose of them. Plus, I’m sure they’ll add a little excitement to the rebels’ plans.”
The General snickered.
“Are you sure that’s safe?” The Economist looked pale.
The Developer turned to the Draftsman for an opinion. “The walls are high and strong,” the Draftsman confirmed. “I’d be surprised if any of them could breach the compound on their own.”
The Economist still looked worried. “W-what if they work together?”
“Together?” the General blurted. He laughed dismissively, as he was wont to do at anything the Economist said. “Please. They’re no better than animals.”
“But that wasn’t always the case…” the Draftsman pointed out.
The Doctor sighed. “Just because they started out as human doesn’t mean they are any longer. They’ve shown no signs of intelligence up to this point. Why would that change?”
The Draftsman didn’t seem exactly convinced. “Do we even really understand what these creatures are?”
The Doctor shrugged his shoulders, his white hair glinting in the light. “The memory alteration research mentioned some, well, unfortunate side effects…”
The Developer interrupted him. “To answer your question, no, we’re not 100% certain what causes the mutation.”
“The onset of symptoms appears to vary by individual,” the Doctor explained. “Once they hit a certain threshold, well,” he snapped his fingers. “Something seems to snap and their brain just can’t take it anymore.”
“I’m really not worried, though, to be honest,” the Developer reassured them.
The Doctor nodded eagerly. “Yes, yes. As we perfect the technology, this will happen less and less.”
“Plus,” the Developer added, “the more terrors there are running around outside the compound, the easier it will be for us to keep the people in.”
The General nodded in agreement, but the Economist just sighed. “Okay. I guess in the worst case we can tell everyone that it’s due to an evolution of the virus.”
“Zombie apocalypse,” the Developer concurred. “The people eat that garbage up.”
“Very well, then,” the Doctor concluded. “Does anyone else have any other matters to bring to the table?”
The remaining Engineers all shook their heads, and the Developer pushed back his chair and rose. His right fist at his shoulder, he waited for the others to stand and mirror his position.
“You know what to do,” he directed.
“For Paragon,” they said in unison. “Always.”
“For Paragon,” the Developer repeated quietly to himself. “Always.”
39. STOWAWAY
Alessa had spent the better part of the ride to Raptor in the second to last car, wedged cozily between her sister and Isaac in one of the few less-crowded corners of the train. By now the morning’s excitement had worn off, and most of the exhausted rebel group had taken to carving out small places on the floor to rest their weary heads.
Alessa had napped peacefully like the rest of them for the past hour or so, the rhythmic chug of the wheels lulling her into a deep and restful slumber.
But at some point something had woken her, some disturbing, incongruous urge that’d crept stealthily into her subconscious. The thought had faded the moment she’d sat up with a gasp, and now she couldn’t remember what it was. But an unsettling feeling had whittled its way deep into her gut, and she couldn’t seem to fall back asleep.
Alessa eased her way from under Isaac’s arm and slid out from between him and Janie. An errant knee brushed against Janie’s back, but to Alessa’s relief, her sister simply muttered a half-dazed grievance to herself and fell promptly back to sleep. Good, Janie needed her rest.
Stepping carefully over the dreaming bodies strewn about the floor, Alessa carefully picked her way toward the rickety door that connected this car to the last. The sidewalls of that car had been damaged in the fire that’d landed this relic of old-world transportation in the museum where the rebels fou
nd it, and as a result, a brisk wind howled through the car, chilling it to an uncomfortable temperature. The rebels had decided to use it for storage of the few possessions that’d been permitted on the train, but Alessa thought the fresh air might do her some good.
She was irked to find that the door latch was rusted shut. Luckily, her knife was still in her pocket from the morning’s raid. She wedged the sturdy tempered blade between the latch and the wood and struck down on the hilt with her elbow, positioning her body to muffle the sound as a courtesy to the sleeping passengers. When the bolt finally sprang loose with a pop, Alessa glanced around warily but was pleased to find that no one appeared to have been disturbed.
She scooted through the narrow door and the one following it, and closed both quickly behind her, blocking the next car from the roar of the blustery draft circling the carriage through the wide gaps in the smoke-stained walls.
Alessa leaned back against the door and closed her eyes, inhaling deeply. The chilly air burned her throat, in a good way – she felt refreshed. But the strange feeling in her chest stubbornly refused to subside.
As Alessa opened her eyes once more, she thought she caught a shadow scurrying behind some of the boxes and bags piled toward the back of the car. Was someone there?
“Hello?” Alessa called.
There was no answer, of course, besides the low lament of the wind. She must have been imagining things.
Or maybe not.
Something thumped behind a tall pile of boxes, and Alessa jumped.
It was probably just a bag come loose, she told herself. Plenty of cargo had shifted during the bumpy ride through Paragon’s tunnels.
But then why was her heart pounding against her ribs like this? Every muscle in Alessa’s body tingled, and she’d learned not to ignore her instincts. Something was wrong here.
Suddenly Alessa recognized something pulsing through her mind, a familiar mix of frustration and confusion and fright, punctuated by something else, the memory of some sharp metallic taste…
Blood, she realized. She was tasting blood.
Shudder (Stitch Trilogy, Book 2) Page 25
