by Sean Platt
He nodded. “I’m Ian’s boss. I’m also Hemisphere’s liaison with Panacea. I imagine you came across my name in the documents I sent you. Or maybe the files I sent to Ian.”
“That was you. On the phone.”
“It was.”
Alice looked at the camera. At the cell. At the door to the outside hallway, firmly closed.
Smyth followed her eyes. “I’m not worried about us being overheard, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Why not?”
“This is a holding cell, not a jail. Everyone’s gone home for the night. It’s just me and you.”
“Why am I being held?” Alice demanded.
“Because you’re an enemy of the state, Ms. Frank. I’d have thought you’d’ve figured that out by now.” He gave a little shrug. “That’s also why I didn’t carry the ball myself. I didn’t particularly want to be in there with you.”
“So you just wanted someone else to do your dirty work.”
“It’s bigger than just me, Alice,” Smyth said, pulling a metal chair from a corner and sitting on it opposite her. “If someone was going to bring down Hemisphere, it couldn’t happen from the inside.”
“Why not? You recruited Ian.”
“Ian was necessary. He has access to the information I needed to push at him, in which our mutual friend August will find more than meets the eye. That information needed to be carried out of the building, not sent, or it’d have been detected. Ian has sufficient access to get whatever else August may need to make his case. And Ian can get him into the labs, where he can confirm it.”
“Why not you?”
“Because I’m necessary, too. We all have our parts to play. And when the three of you tell the world what it needs to know, I’ll be right where I need to be. Because the truth will come out, but Hemisphere is, to borrow an old expression, ‘too big to fail.’”
Alice exhaled, unsure what to say. She held the cell’s bars, wanting to shake them, to demand more information from this maddeningly calm man.
“How are we going to bring it down, then?” Alice asked.
“About a half hour ago, Ian Keys’s access signature was used to gain entry to our modeling software. We both know that you sent Ian to August earlier tonight, so that’s August’s hand inside the system, not Ian’s. It seems August is as brilliant as he always was. I’ve tried to work out what exactly Archibald was hiding, but I’m not a scientist. August went for the throat from another angle, once he knew it had something or other to do with BioFuse.”
“You said something about that earlier. About BioFuse,” Alice said, more intrigued than angry — and less mad than she wanted to be. She’d been sure for years that Hemisphere was hiding something, that their swooping in to save the day and make their hundreds of billions was too convenient. She wanted to know the story’s resolution, even if she’d been pinched in the process.
“Yes. That’s all I knew: that there was something concealed and that BioFuse was part of it. And that Archibald buried those nuggets deeper than the rest. I’ve grown to know him quite well and can read him like a book. But he can read me, too. I couldn’t ask. I couldn’t dig. I don’t have the science to understand it anyway. But August could. And you could blow the whistle while I stayed close.”
“Close to Archibald Burgess?”
“Yes. The shell of this company will need to survive, and the brain behind it needs to stay on call. Because the world relies on Necrophage, right or wrong.”
“Wrong,” Alice said, waiting for more, asking a question without asking at all.
“August has concluded that Hemisphere engineered Sherman Pope. That it modified our earlier drug BioFuse to do more than repair Alzheimer’s — to repair bodies and brains even as they fell apart and went mad. It makes sense. Even the worst ferals only decay so far. We’ve seen it in Bakersfield and in Yosemite. They reach a point of stability, where the disease props them up just as quickly as it dies.”
Alice felt her legs want to wobble. Somewhere deep down, her gut had suggested something this dark, but that was only morose fantasy. Hemisphere had saved untold millions of lives with Necrophage. But it had killed just as many before the cure had been found … or, more likely, before it had been released, ready to sojourn into the world and usher in profit.
Alice looked at Smyth then around at her cell. The unspoken question finally fell from her lips.
“Are you going to let me out of here?”
“No.”
Alice blinked. “What? Why not? I thought you were one of the good guys. You started this. You stuffed me and Ian together so I could blab about whatever he and August found. You turned off the goddamned camera when you came in here, for Christ’s sake!”
Smyth seemed analytical, unconcerned. He crossed his legs and said, “When you came in here, did they offer you a phone call?”
“You just said that I ‘sent Ian to August tonight.’”
“So I surmised. But I didn’t ask if you called anyone. I asked if it was offered.”
“It was offered. But I wasn’t read my rights, and that’s … ”
Smyth looked disappointed. Alice trailed off.
“What?” she asked.
Smyth seemed to search for a place to begin. Then: “There’s a rather strong partnership between Hemisphere, who manufactures the drug that keeps the infected safe, and Panacea, who does its work more directly out on the streets. That partnership kept the outbreak inside US borders. Hemisphere’s knowledge and Panacea’s muscle established the Yosemite preserve. They kept the public’s hearts and minds on an even keel. My job is to lubricate that partnership. But recently I’ve begun to fear that something is changing.”
“Changing how?”
“They let you make that call to August, about Ian. I’m sure you were careful with your words, but the fact that they let you make the call at all — that they practically requested you make it — makes me wonder what Panacea knows and where their allegiances lie.”
“You think — ”
“Panacea should feel the same as Hemisphere. They should want the truth about the disease’s origins concealed. But lately I’ve seen signs that they feel differently. Prompting your call, perhaps with knowledge of what you know and are attempting to do. Allowing you to use your own phone, which would suggest to August that you were free to speak, at least to some degree. But there’s more. Things like this attack, in the mall. It’s not the only one there’s been, you know.”
“There have been other outbreaks?” Alice shivered. Of course; there were always small fires that Panacea was sent into the wild lands to quell, or into urban areas to extinguish. But never inside Dead City itself. And never …
Alice almost didn’t want to ask.
“Outbreaks like that one?” she finished.
Smyth nodded. “They have to be grown that way. Kept chained and untreated then injected with Necrophage after they’ve passed the critical inflection point and can no longer be saved.”
“Why would anyone do that?”
“Because Necrophage halts degradation and makes some repairs, essentially ticking the clock backward on decay by a few days or a week after the first bolus. In a percentage of cases, those treated after — but very recently after — their point of no return retain enough bodily strength to do what you saw earlier today. They can run. And fight.”
Alice felt a charge fill her. She had to get out of here. The public needed to know all of this, regardless of which pieces she could prove.
“And there have been whispers from my contacts on the Panacea side about solutions to a problem at Yosemite that isn’t being shared with me. Rumors being spread about Necrophage itself: that its effectiveness may be diminishing. Which, to my knowledge, is entirely false. But it seems to me that Panacea is trying to do something, and that it’s seeding fear as a weapon.”
“So let me out. I can time a release for Hemisphere’s big feel-good press event tomorrow. Let me blow the whistle.”
/>
“Not just yet,” Smyth said, falling into a fugue of concentration.
“Why the hell not?”
Smyth stood. Then he turned and left, leaving the camera disconnected.
Alice started screaming.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
:)
DANNY’S CAPTORS WERE INDECISIVE.
THEY weren’t cops or clarifiers or anyone official; he’d worked that out pretty quickly. His own sense of guilt had kept him quiet at first (he wasn’t used to prowling dark houses looking for quiet ways inside, and justifying it wasn’t easy), but once they’d shoved everyone into vehicles and left the community, Danny had become vocal. He’d pointed out that, appearances to the contrary, he’d done nothing wrong. He’d said “my lawyer” a time or two, even though he didn’t have one. And he’d tried to charm Ian’s wife, Ian’s daughter, and the stern-faced producer-turned-SWAT-leader into seeing things his way.
Hey, I was just looking for my beer buddy near midnight and thought he might be hiding outside his house in the bushes. What’s the big deal?
Danny didn’t think anyone bought what he was shoveling, but they also had no authority. Near as he could tell, these were TV hunters — or, more likely, wannabes to the real TV hunters. This was a businesswoman and a few idiots with guns. If push came to shove, Danny could request a formal arrest. And then whom would the cops want to talk to?
After a lot of posturing and hemming and hawing and promises that he’d be in big trouble if he messed with anyone again, they dropped Danny off at a bus stop near the Skin District. His car was back at Lion’s Gate (ironically outside the gate), but he wasn’t going to push. He was free, and Jordache still needed him. This would have to be close enough.
He waited for the bus beside six twitchers so far gone that Danny spent the wait with keys clenched in his fist. He didn’t even try to hide it. Let these lowest-on-society’s-totem-pole try to snack on him. As rank with decay as these people smelled, he wondered if he could smash through their skulls with his hand.
He rode the bus in dark silence. He made the mistake of sitting by the window, and a woman with her face halfway off sat beside him. She either fell asleep or died then bled all over him.
Disgusted and increasingly fearful, Danny rode to the center of town and hailed a cab. The driver was necrotic, too, and Danny, in his frustration with the world, had to fight a biting comment about how the driver had better not snap his fucking foot off on the pedal. If that happened, Danny planned to haul his ass out into the street and drive the cab himself.
It was one in the morning by the time they approached Jordache’s neighborhood. Everything was quiet. His phone vibrated in his pocket.
A text from Jordache: Feeling better. Going to sleep. See you in the morning.
It buzzed again: Not before 9 a.m. :)
Danny stared at the smiley face. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to shout at it or kiss it. Seeing as he was in the back of a cab, covered in dark blood, exhausted, and on an adrenaline hangover that made him feel weak, neither felt appropriate.
Maybe it was fine.
In fact, it almost certainly was.
Feeling better.
Danny’s eyes flicked to the second message.
:)
It was one thing to stop sending him things that seemed crazy and deranged and full of hallucinations. It was better to get a text indicating that everything was, somehow, working out after all. But a smiley face? That wasn’t just not bad. That was almost happy.
Danny closed his eyes, feeling bone weary. He truly was exhausted. He really could do with some sleep. When he’d been by earlier, Jordache had been like a sick patient who needed chicken noodle soup and comfort. And he could provide both much better if he didn’t feel like the walking undead himself.
He spoke to the driver, giving him a new destination. The driver grunted. Or maybe it was a groan. This late, most of the workers were deeply, almost hopelessly necrotic. They barely needed sleep, seeing as they were practically dead.
Jordache was fine. Truly, she was. The more Danny said it inside his own mind, the better he felt. Because it was true. Of course she was fine. Why wouldn’t she be? She was on Necrophage and had never stopped being on it. Whatever had happened before now had been … some sort of a hiccup, perhaps. Now she was settling in. She wouldn’t have her PhageX glow until Danny managed to reach the absent Ian Keys, but he could do that later in the week. No rush. Because after a brief and rather intense scare, she was fine.
He could sleep.
And see her in the morning, cleaned up, happy, and fresh as a daisy.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
BACON
IAN WOKE TO THE SOUNDS of popping and the smells of bacon.
At first, he didn’t know where he was. The ceiling above him was wrong, too white and too far, as if he were too low to the ground or it were too high. Both were true. Ian made a small fortune each year and lived in a helluva house. But even August’s throwaway second residence made Ian’s McMansion look like a hovel.
Ian sat. The couches opposite him in the living room were empty. He’d kicked his covers to the floor. He’d slept in his clothes because Bridget hadn’t brought him anything new. She had brought clothes for herself and Ana — just a little campout with a famous recluse at destinations unknown. But she and Ana had slept in a sort of second office with the door closed, on a fold-out futon while Ian was out here, alone, in the middle of Grand Central, uninvited.
He stood and ran his hand through his hair. He felt gross. There was a bathroom between him and the mysterious bacon smell, so he stepped inside, found a small tube of toothpaste, and used his finger to smear it around until the bad taste went away. His hair didn’t have a lot of character on its own and laid obediently down with a bit of work. His eyes weren’t as compliant. Looking in the mirror, Ian realized for the first time that he was no longer precisely young. He wasn’t yet old, but he’d never again be denied service in a bar for want of an ID.
Ian found Bobby Baltimore in the kitchen, alone, working a cast-iron skillet.
“Oh, hey,” Bobby said, turning at the sound of footsteps. “Did I wake you?”
Ian shook his head. “I thought you were August.”
“I do a great August impression. That’s probably why.”
“Where is August?”
“Dunno. His office light is on under the door, though, so I assume he’s still working.”
Ian looked at Bobby, the pan, and around the kitchen. Bobby watched him look.
“What?” Bobby asked.
“I’m just wondering what made you go into someone else’s kitchen, get bacon out of the fridge, and fry it up for yourself.”
Bobby speared a few pieces of bacon and dropped them on a paper-towel-lined plate beside the stove. He pushed the plate toward Ian. “It’s not only for me.”
Ian leaned against the counter, looking in the living room’s general direction, waiting for the bacon to cool. He realized he hadn’t eaten much at dinner last night and had put nothing in his belly since. He’d always meant to go home. The hours had dragged and dragged, and then just as his eyes were getting bleary Bobby’s people had shown up with Bridget, Ana, and a story that sent a chill up Ian’s spine. He’d been wrong to leave them alone after all, and now someone else had needed to save them. Bridget hadn’t met his eye. She’d merely accepted August’s unsurprised hospitality and gone straight to bed. It was all matter-of-fact, this giant slumber party unusual to no one.
At least Alice wasn’t here. Even Holly had gone to bed after pointing out that none of them had any business still being ambulatory. Tonight, at least, Bridget could see that Ian wasn’t cheating. Just lying. Just acting in a way that expelled them from their home, probably cost them their sole income, and endangered all of their lives. She hadn’t even asked for an explanation. That’s how moot his excuses would have been.
Ian munched a piece of the bacon. It was crunchy, salty, thick-sliced — in some strange
way, rich man’s bacon. It settled into his stomach with a gurgling and only made him hungrier.
“So how do you know August?” Bobby asked, removing more bacon, adding more raw pink strips to the pan from an open flower of butcher paper.
“I don’t know August. Alice — Alice Frank? — she’s the one who knows August.”
“Oh yes. I know who Alice is.”
“That’s right. The documentary.” Explaining Alice to Bobby Baltimore? Hadn’t he just watched the Yosemite piece? Hadn’t the whole world just watched that piece? He must be tired. Either that or slowly losing his mind, giving in to the voices Holly had admitted to hearing in her head.
“So you work at Hemisphere.”
Ian nodded, chewing.
“This is all news to you?”
“It’s not something they put in the annual report.”
“Did you hear anything around the office? Murmurs? Rumors?”
“We’re as pro-Hemisphere at Hemisphere as the world is.”
Bobby’s eyes ticked toward a screen mounted among August’s cabinets. It was off, but there was a control panel on the wall, within reach.
“You should see today’s news. It’s not just Shangri-la right now.”
“Why, what’s happening?”
“More people mouthing off with their theories, is all.” He half laughed. “It’s amazing what we’ve gotten used to. When I was a kid, half of the people I now pass on the streets would have been called monsters.”
“Is that why you hunt?”
“Some of it. When they flip, they’re just animals. Believe me, we’re doing them a favor.” His bright-blue eyes seemed to darken, as if realizing something he’d forgotten. His spatula, in the pan, ceased moving.
“What?” Ian asked.
“You know, it’s funny. I just told you exactly what people expect me to say. But I don’t actually feel that way anymore. It just came out. Isn’t that weird?”
Ian shrugged, not understanding.
“We grew up with zombies, right? People started drawing comparisons even when Rip Daddy hit. And then Sherman Pope? Hell, the dead walk among us. It’s like the Internet had been waiting for it, with the labels all ready. Everyone knew just what to do. They’re slow, so don’t get cornered, and you’d be okay. They’re mad, so you have to destroy the brain. Fucking disease is freaky. The first time I saw a torso with a punched lung dragging its ass after me, I thought I’d died myself and gone to Hell. I don’t know how they can function without blood and air, and I guess they can’t always, at least not for long. But it’s still like seeing a cockroach keep walking after its head is cut off.” He shivered.
