by Sean Platt
Each time he answered the texts’ obvious message and ignored the deeper query. He could imagine Jordache getting increasingly nervous. His lack of response about the designer Necrophage was an answer in itself. They both knew how badly she wanted — and, really, probably needed — the drug she’d grown accustomed to. It was top of mind for them both, even though Jordache had work and Danny had legitimate clients. He knew how much she wanted the good news he’d promised, and how much he’d want to reassure her once he had it. Saying nothing was an answer. One that had to be making her shake and panic.
Relax, he told himself. It’s just a glitch in the door. This isn’t Fort Knox. You can still get in. And besides, worse comes to worst, Jordache can go back on normal, base Necrophage for a few days. She wants the good stuff, but it won’t hurt her if she doesn’t get it. Anyone infected can be completely without Phage for a week or more and fully recover. And this isn’t that. This is just stepping down, not going off entirely. It’s fine.
But Danny didn’t like that he was rationalizing. It meant part of him had already surrendered. And while it was true that Jordache would be fine on base Phage (and, in all likelihood, that she’d recover any of the perceived gains she’d made once back on X), the idea of having to break the news to her hurt. It was the opposite of bringing a girl flowers. It was more like visiting a girl who already had flowers and ripping them to mulch. Not exactly the way to endear himself to her.
Danny backed away from the door, making himself busy reviewing a Panacea/CDC poster about Sherman Pope safety. It wasn’t the sort of thing that Danny needed reminding about. If you were bitten, you needed to get a Necrophage bolus. If you saw someone who seemed to be raging, you called the hotline.
Beside the first poster, there was a second from the Human Resources Department that covered such delicate workplace matters as when a coworker’s fingers fell off. It seemed like a strange pairing.
Halfway through reading the second poster (If you notice blood in a common area such as a coffee station, call Workplace Assistance, and do not accuse anyone directly), a tall black man approached the door that had been stymieing Danny and waved his card in front of the sensor. The box flashed green. Danny moved into position behind the man, staying back, and put his foot in the door just before it closed.
Once through, Danny began flicking at the card on his belt, wondering if the dispensary would give him problems, too.
It had to be a problem with the door. The access Danny had coded into the card was Ian Keys’s. Ian was damn near the top of the company, and could go anywhere. The idea that Ian — who the door had been thinking Danny was for six months now — would be denied access to places and products was ridiculous.
The dispensary would be fine. Ian’s card would unlock the inventory same as before. The door was a fluke.
But when Danny reached the automated dispensary window (after looking around to clear the way), he found that Ian — or at least the Ian on Danny’s card — was no longer cleared for access. To anything at all.
Danny tried his own card. It opened the pharma inventory here in Alpha to his normal access level. Same as in the dispensary he normally used.
That meant the problem wasn’t the dispensary door. The problem was Ian’s card. Ian’s access.
Something had been changed.
“Shit,” Danny said aloud.
Why would Ian’s code change? He’d been paranoid about that early on, certain that security would shuffle codes regularly and Danny would have to find a way to snag Ian’s card and keep ripping new codes on a schedule, but it hadn’t happened. Not until today. Not until Jordache was bone dry and Danny needed PhageX most of all.
With his own account in the auto-dispensary still open, Danny scrolled through the list of medications he was permitted to order — but not sell below the table, of course, because Danny’s requisitions, unlike Ian’s, were tracked and reconciled. Maybe there was something in here he hadn’t noticed. Some drug he’d had access to all along that might do in this particular pinch.
But of course, there was nothing. He could order base Necrophage in as large of quantities as he wanted, which meant nothing seeing as the drug was free. The rest of what Danny had access to was useless. He could order samples of the neuroenhancement lines, the depression line, various biotic treatments. Or maybe, instead of PhageX, he could take Jordache something from the Alzheimer’s line — drugs Danny didn’t recognize, half of which didn’t appear to be in production: Fabriplaque, ReWAYS, BioFuse.
Again, Danny swiped his card. The dispensary beeped obnoxiously back.
“Come on. Come on, you piece of shit.”
Danny swiped again. The machine beeped.
“Fucker!”
Danny brought his fist down on the machine’s screen just as the tall black man from earlier was walking by. He slowed to give Danny a sideways look, perhaps remembering him loitering outside the doors, maybe wondering who Danny was and whether or not he was even supposed to be here.
Danny put on his salesman’s smile. “Technology,” he said, half scoffing.
The man watched Danny for another few seconds then moved on down the hallway.
Now what? Jordache said she had enough PhageX to get her through today but no more. Danny had thought he had stock, but it turned out he didn’t. The whole plan — and on any other day, it would have worked perfectly, even if it was to the wire — was to use this machine to get more. Then going so close to the bone wouldn’t matter. Jordache would have plenty, and the next time, Danny would be sure to refill far enough in advance to allow for stupid fucking machines with their stupid fucking electronic fits.
But now he was stuck. Even if it was a mistake, there was nobody he could go to for help. He couldn’t call tech support because they’d ask for the problem card in order to test the system themselves — and that might not just blow things today; it could blow the last six months wide open. There must be records of all he’d requisitioned, even if the system hadn’t required him to settle and show his receipts. Anyone who looked closely would see what he was up to, and then he wouldn’t just be fired; he’d probably be arrested. Even his clients might come under suspicion. Jordache might get in trouble.
He couldn’t rush into Ian’s office for a new code, seeing as he had no business anywhere Ian went beyond the parking lot, and seeing as he’d need to manufacture a new excuse to borrow the card. He couldn’t yell at Ian, either: Hey, asshole, why did you go and change your access codes? Didn’t you stop to think about all the illicit users you might be inconveniencing?
Danny’s phone buzzed. He pulled it from his pocket and read Jordache’s latest:
See you tonight?
Yes, Danny thought, I suppose you’ll see me tonight. Empty handed, leaving you high and dry.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
DRIVE-BY
PEEKING BETWEEN THE BLINDS, IAN watched a sleek black car pass the stone mailbox in front of his house. He was in his office, presumably working, exactly where he wasn’t supposed to be. Bridget had even given him a look for coming up here — again, her eyes had said. But in the hierarchy of things Ian needed to be worrying about right now, people stalking his home mattered more than his wife’s temporary disapproval.
The car was uninteresting and unremarkable. It could have belonged to anyone, and Lion’s Gate wasn’t a community unfamiliar with black luxury sedans. Except that this car had a bright-orange license plate — either a New York plate or one of those tattletale plates some states gave out when the owner was convicted of a DUI. It didn’t matter which it was. Only that the car was obvious, sufficient to tell Ian it had passed by three times already.
There was a sharp rattling sound. Ian jumped, heart thumping before he realized it was only his phone vibrating on the desk.
He snatched it up too eagerly.
“Hey.” Only after his greeting did Ian see who was calling.
“You eating dinner?”
“Gennifer.” He exhaled.
“You sound surprised.”
“No. I’m sorry. I’m just … ” But what was the end of that sentence? Was he worked up over nothing? Nervous for no reason? Guilty for being innocent? Never before had Ian felt so uneasy telling the truth about mundane events. He hadn’t wanted to tell anyone that someone had given him publicly available company info. He hadn’t wanted to tell his wife he’d spent some time researching the disease his workplace specialized in curing. He hadn’t wanted to admit that he’d been forcibly connected to a reporter who’d managed to mine none of his secrets, not that Ian had any. Today at work, he hadn’t told anyone about his perfectly normal meeting with the boss, and right now he was hiding up here from Bridget, not wanting to admit that there were cars on the street.
“Tired,” Ian finished, knowing it didn’t particularly make sense.
“Well, I asked around for you. Shockingly, nobody had anything helpful to say.”
“You’re sure?”
Gennifer sighed. “Ian, you asked me to see if any projects August might have been involved with were still of interest today. I might as well have been asking whether they’d ever ‘heard something about whatever.’”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, what kind of question is that? August was half of this company for a long time. He was involved, depending on your definition of the word, with most of what Hemisphere does and continues to do.”
Ian’s mind ran back to Burgess’s office and his surprising question about August Maughan. Ian hadn’t considered Maughan, but Burgess’s first thought seemed to be that whatever Ian might be leaking, he might be leaking it to his old colleague. It felt like an itch worth scratching, at least a little, even if it made him feel more like a snoop. More like a liar and traitor. More like the kind of guy a company might send long black sedans to check in on three times in one hour.
“I meant anything he may have been working on when he left, that we might still be interested in today.”
“Why?”
“Just wondering about connections, Gennifer.” He thought fast, feeling the need to justify some of this. “Everyone seems to think that his leaving was a massive loss.”
“I guess it was. But why does that matter now?”
More quick thinking. More manufacturing of bullshit.
“I was watching that Alice Frank documentary about Yosemite. It got me thinking about new directions for Necrophage. The designer versions, I mean. To … uh … address some of the shortfalls Frank identified in current treatments.”
Ian wondered if he was sweating. He peeked back through the blinds.
Gennifer, on the phone’s other end, sighed heavily. It wasn’t a casual sigh. It was the kind of sigh a person makes to tell another person just how exasperating and annoying he’s being. Not to mention irrelevant. There was no line to be drawn between Bobby Baltimore’s Yosemite special and August Maughan. Now Ian felt stupid having tried to justify it. He was Gennifer’s boss. He should be able to ask for something, and she should do it — or pass it down to Ted, Kate, or Gary. Gary would do it without asking questions. If Gary had Gennifer’s level of oversight, he’d have gone direct.
“Why won’t you just tell me what you really want to know? I might be able to help if you’d say what’s on your mind.”
Ian thought. Gennifer wasn’t the kind of person who stepped far off the beaten path. She was the group’s mother. He could trust her, couldn’t he?
Ian’s eyes strayed to the blinds. He pushed them apart with two fingers and saw that the sedan had stopped directly across from his house, someone’s bland face looking out, seemingly right into Ian’s eyes.
“It’s nothing, Gennifer,” said Ian, heart in his throat. “Thanks for your help.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
BREAKING NEWS
THERE WAS A KNOCK AT the Yosemite Bivouac’s open office door. Bobby looked up from his map to see Cindy standing in the threshold.
“Did you see the news?”
“You’ll need to be more specific,” Bobby replied. There was industry news, network news, the twisted species of underground news Bobby followed on the Internet, and plain old gossip. There was too much to pay attention, so Bobby usually chose to remain in the dark. His producer was more responsible than he was, and while in her care, she always made sure he learned what he needed to know.
“With August?”
Bobby’s eyes ticked toward his wall calendar. It was one of those obnoxious Hemisphere feel-good calendars: a Necrophage advertisement in disguise. Every month featured an overly happy-looking necrotic with a stroke victim’s smile. May’s photo had a mostly decaying torso, but at least whatever it was looked joyous.
“It’s July.”
“August Maughan.”
“What about him? Do I need to cancel my appointment?”
“Maybe,” Cindy said. “Seems he’s vanished.”
“August has been ‘vanished’ for years.” Bobby returned his attention to the blue-and-green map atop the table.
“Really vanished.”
Bobby picked up one of his highlighters and dragged it along the straight edge of a ruler, connecting one Reserve spot to another.
“I’m sure he has his phone.”
“Bobby.”
Bobby finished his line then looked up in the quiet, where Cindy was all but tapping her foot, waiting.
“You’re not listening to me. Do you know about the thing with Holly Gaynor?”
“What thing?”
“She was giving out some awards for Hemisphere. She suddenly started talking normally.”
“Fascinating.”
“Bobby, she’s practically tipping point. You’ve seen her movies. You can barely understand her.”
Bobby looked back down. Put one finger at the ridge. Another in Purgatory Valley. There was something missing — something he just wasn’t seeing.
Barely paying attention, Bobby said, “Maybe she was acting.”
“Her being strange is kind of whatever. We’ve seen weirder things out in the park, honestly. But then everyone kind of got uneasy. Cops or crowd control moved around to settle things, and for a while, in the footage, it’s like something bad could have happened.”
“Did it?”
“No.”
Bobby looked up, not taking his fingers from their places, and flashed his white teeth at Cindy, lips stretched to his widest smile.
“This is a great story. I love a happy ending.”
“August was there. At the awards ceremony.”
Bobby’s cheeks went slack.
“There with Holly Gaynor?”
Cindy nodded. “Across the street. The cameras pan over when some cops move in that direction. Looks like he’s guilty of something, really. He shuffles right into a cab and peels away.”
“Why was he there?”
“Officially, nobody’s saying anything. But if you look on the boards, people think Holly was a client.”
“Big deal. I’m a client.”
“You want to live forever. If Holly’s a client, she just wants to live.”
“August does life extension. What the hell would he do with a deadhead as a client?”
Cindy looked like she was about to rebuke Bobby for his borderline slur, so he rushed to beat her.
“She’s practically dead, Cindy. Maybe actually dead, technically. She must have a two-week incubation. How exactly is August supposed to help someone like that? Necrophage keeps them alive, but it’s like treading water.”
“I’m just telling you what people are saying. Holly looks right at him, the cops or clarifiers or whoever they are look where she’s looking, and then there’s this slow-speed chase where everyone looks too polite to run. If you ask me, it seems like they were all curious like you are. What exactly would the world’s best-known longevity specialist be doing with a necrotic client?”
“He used to work at Hemisphere.”
“He cofounded Hemisphere,” Cind
y said.
“So? They developed Necrophage. Maybe it makes sense.”
“He left before Necrophage. Or during. I’d need to check. Before that, Hemisphere was all life extension.”
Bobby tapped the highlighter against his chin. “You know, Alice was asking about him. About August.”
“Asking in what way?”
“In the way a reporter who mainly covers necrotic culture and Sherman Pope would ask, maybe.” He tapped the highlighter a few more times. “What time is it back East?”
“Seven thirty.”
“It’s got to be later than that.”
“You’re a smart guy, Bobby. I don’t know why you can’t figure out how time zones work.” Pause. “What, do you want to do another special? You want me to call her for you?”
Bobby thought then shook his head. “No. I’m headed back to Dead City tomorrow anyway.” He looked around the Bivouac. “Which, ironically, is far less dead than what I’m used to.”
“I wasn’t kidding, Bobby. I tried contacting him for you. I’m getting nothing but voicemail. He hasn’t been publicly visible in the best of times, and suddenly everyone is interested in him again, and whether he had something to do with Holly Gaynor’s strange appearance … who, by the way, seems to have gone underground as well. Not that I have her phone number. But, you know. Rumor.”
“Rumor, Cindy.”
“I don’t think August is going to be interested in restoring your telemetry if he’s — ”
“Telomeres.”
“Whatever. I love you, Bobby, but let’s face it. You pay that man a shitload of money for what are essentially spa treatments. I can’t imagine it’s worth flying all the way back to Aberdeen for, if he has other things on his mind.”
“Our visa is up anyway,” Bobby said, his attention straying back to the map. It was circled with five colors of highlighter, each with its own meaning. Bobby hoped Cindy wouldn’t look too closely and ask him about it. Given all the detail he’d added about movements, timestamps, and positions, there was little chance of her believing he was planning locations to shoot on their next visit.
