Slowly, her vision regained focus, and her eyes adjusted to the glaring lights.
A feeling that she wasn’t alone nagged at her.
She tried to move her head to the left, where she spotted a doorway in her peripheral vision. Pain shot down her neck, through her shoulder, and down her arm. Her fingers tingled.
“Agh,” she moaned. “Matthew?” Her voice sounded distant and raspy.
Nobody answered. She initiated the slow, agonizing motion of turning her head to the right. Behind the imaging machinery, EKG machine, and IV drip, she saw another shape lying motionless in a bed. “Hello?”
The other patient remained still and silent, despite Audrey’s painful second attempt to get her attention. She returned her gaze to the holoscreen that projected a muted show on the wall in front of her. A dated travel show was playing, following a host who possessed a curious desire to try odd, mostly disgusting cuisines throughout the world. Audrey hated the tacky, obnoxious Hawaiian shirts that the man wore and despised his tackier, more obnoxious personality.
She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth, but found clenching her jaw created a sensation of dull pain across the side of her face. In another slow movement, she brought her right hand up to feel her cheeks and jaw. Her arm practically creaked and her skin held taut as she concentrated on lifting her hand. Sweat trickled across the back of her neck. With a delicate touch, she caressed her cheek, feeling an unfamiliar fabric covering her skin.
Slowly, her mind filled with memories leading up to the present.
Streams of people in collared shirts and suit jackets filling the street.
Questions about the cause for alarm, firemen running into the LyfeGen building shimmering in the afternoon sun.
A bright flash, an invisible force.
“Nice to see you with your eyes open, sweetheart.”
Audrey focused on the woman in scrubs moving into her line of sight. The voice almost echoed, distorted in her ears, as if the woman were talking to her underwater.
“My name’s Vanessa, if you need anything. There’s a little button right under the railing on both sides of your bed.”
Audrey attempted to follow the nurse’s movements, but a sharp pain in her neck shuddered back down her arm and shocked her skull. She felt blindly with her fingers for the button under the railing of her bed. Instead of being a touchscreen or a thermoresist response button, it required manual pressing. She pressed her thumb lightly against it, testing its resistance, and a light beside her bed glowed red.
“There you go,” Vanessa said. “You found it.”
Her scrubs ruffled beside Audrey and a satisfying click sounded in her foggy hearing. The red light immediately ceased glowing.
“Can I get you anything, sweetie?”
“My...Matthew,” Audrey said.
“Oh, your husband.” The nurse nodded. “He left a few minutes ago, back past the nurses’ station. I think he just went to the cafeteria or something. He’s been sitting at your side for quite some time.” The nurse stopped, squinting in a thoughtful expression. “Maybe eight or nine hours. Well before you got out of the OR.”
“Oh.”
“I’m sure he’ll be back soon, sweetheart. You just focus on healing up. You’re real lucky, you know?” Vanessa offered a smile again, her hands on her hips.
Audrey attempted a weak smile in return, but the coarse fabric held her lips still. Stretching out the corners of her mouth only resulted in another dull sensation of pain.
“If things start hurting,” Vanessa said, “just ring the nurses’ station. You should be okay for the night, but eventually the painkillers are going to wear out.”
“Mmhmm,” Audrey said. Her eyelids sagged again. The effort it had taken to regain consciousness and make sense of her surroundings took its toll on her, and exhaustion set in again.
***
“She’s asleep. I’d recommend waiting.”
“Okay. I don’t mind.”
Audrey tried to open her eyes. Unfortunately, both of the women who were talking were flirting with her peripheral vision. The first voice, though, had a familiar, soothing tone.
The murkiness of Audrey’s hearing slowly dissipated. Disoriented, she tried to look at the clock blinking above the holoscreen on the wall. Only an hour had passed since she first woke up to find Vanessa nearby.
With a strained effort, she turned her head slightly toward the doorway to her room. Only one woman stood there now.
She was unfamiliar, wearing a black-and-white houndstooth-patterned coat. The woman approached the chair beside Audrey’s bed.
Audrey coughed a couple of times, her throat burning. “Who are you?”
“I’m sorry to bother you. And for all of this.” The woman held her hands out. “I’m Monica Wolfe.”
Narrowing her eyes, Audrey stared at the woman. Monica’s bangs curled out from under a knitted purple stocking hat. Her circular face and snub nose didn’t stir any particular memories or recognition. The name, though, sounded as though she had once heard it in a passing conversation or an interview or maybe a news stream she had read. “I don’t know you.”
Monica smiled sympathetically. “I know. I figured you’d probably forgotten about me.”
“Forgotten?” Audrey tried to frown, but her forehead was stuck in place by the tightly wrapped bandages and skin patches. “I look awful, don’t I?” She coughed again.
“Considering what you went through, I’d say you don’t look half bad.” Monica sighed and looked down. “It sounds like you don’t remember me, but I sent a few messages to you regarding information I uncovered about LyfeGen. I think I found links to the person responsible for the deaths that were caused by the Sustain organs.”
With considerable effort, Audrey sat up straighter. Her heart beat quicker. Lucidity fought to overcome the fogginess of painkillers. With a sobering realization of the absurdness of a strange woman in her room after almost being torn apart in a bomb blast, Audrey’s fingers crept toward the call button on her hospital bed. “Conspiracy...crazy. I’ll call security.”
Monica stood up, but didn’t head toward the door. Instead, she eyed the other occupant in the hospital room and leaned in closer to Audrey. “Don’t do that, please. I promise you, everything I have to tell you is completely legitimate. I quit my job and I’m risking everything just to tell you this. I know what this must look like from your position, but I need you to listen. At least consider what I have to say.” She held out her hands imploringly. “I think I know who might be responsible—at least partially—for all of this.”
Audrey squinted. She kept her fingers brushing across the call button. “What about the police?”
Monica cringed. “I’m afraid the methods I used to find this information aren’t exactly legal. I need your protection.”
“You want to blow the whistle.” Audrey licked her lips. Her jaw moved more loosely now. Painfully, but loosely.
“I figured if I told someone with some clout in the news streams, I could blow the lid on this whole thing and be protected by being your source or something.”
“Why me? Why now?”
“I’ve read your stories. You’ve always protected your sources and you haven’t told me to screw off yet. After the bombing today, I knew I couldn’t wait any longer. I’m really sorry to bug you like this, but we need to act now. If you don’t want this story, I’ll tell the police everything and turn myself in.”
Audrey eyed her, contemplating the woman. She couldn’t have been more than twenty-five and she claimed to have given up a job, possibly a career, to come see her at a hospital. “What’s in it for you?”
“I know it sounds funny, but I want to do the right thing.” Monica smiled sheepishly, her eyes sunken and almost sad.
Audrey waited in silence until Monica spoke again.
“The truth is, I didn’t set out to uncover all this. I wanted to find out—” Monica paused, clenching her jaw. “I wanted to steal information—tr
ade secrets, lab protocols, data—about the Sustain and get it to the research management at NanoTech. I wanted a better job, a better boss.”
Audrey nodded. “Okay.” A headache began to pulse in a distant region of her brain, but she could move her lips better now. Her vision was clear as long as she was looking ahead. She could contain her pain if she didn’t make any strenuous or rapid movement. “I’m not going anywhere. Tell me what you know.”
Monica explained that she had uncovered a strange pattern in the genetic production logs from Dave Stemper. In fact, his death was suspicious and she was surprised that no one had investigated the circumstances that had led to his fatal car accident. She told Audrey about the necessary access to Stemper or to the custom genetic profiles and production lines that the saboteur must have had. And she relayed the strange message that Stemper had gotten through his work line the night of his death.
“I believe that Whitney Brayson is responsible,” Monica said. “It seems like she had an intimate relationship with Stemper and it would have been easy for her to use him to access the production line. In addition, she’s still responsible for incoming genetic data from customers. That would explain the modifications that happened after Stemper’s death.”
“I suppose so,” Audrey said. “But no one else has access to these genetic production files?”
Monica shrugged. “There are a couple of other people in research and quality control who could, but I think the late-night message between Stemper and the woman I think is Whitney cinched the deal for me.”
Audrey’s eyelids sagged, heavy and swollen. She took in a deep breath of oxygen through the tubes in her nose, inhaling a light painkiller that soothed her singed trachea.
Back at the office, Audrey had listened regularly to Robert Bennett, most of the time not entirely by choice. The man chased terrorism stories around the country from Chicago, flying out at the slightest rumor or whisper of conspiracy. From him, she learned enough about homemade incendiary bombs and biological agents to make the average person paranoid enough to run from an empty coffee cup left on a sidewalk. She’d never imagined being part of one of Bennett’s stories.
She had been close enough to see the bomb rip apart the podium where Anil Nayak was intended to speak. She never saw the man, but vague memories of his name being called out by a couple of the other reporters at the scene surfaced in her mind.
“I want you to know...” Audrey cleared her throat. “I want you to know that, before all of this, I was operating under a very different theory, supported by a prominent, well-regarded source.”
“I wouldn’t be risking everything like this if I didn’t believe in what I found.”
Audrey sighed, which promptly sent her into a coughing fit. Her throat scratched as if she had swallowed sand. When she regained her composure, she slowly cranked her neck to better face Monica. A dull pain throbbed in her muscles and her skin burned hotter. She placed her finger across the plastic call button again. This time, it wasn’t to protect herself from the woman seated in her hospital room, but rather in preparation to call for the next round of painkillers.
With a slow, deep breath, Audrey closed her eyes and concentrated on what Monica had told her. “That’s impressive that you risked everything, but I’m not willing to do that.”
Monica’s eyes scrunched up. “Aren’t you risking everything by not acting? Isn’t that how you work in the news? No one is impressed by the writer who publishes last night’s news.”
“I just survived a bomb. Thanks to modern medicine, I’m still alive and able to talk to you. Twenty years ago, I can’t imagine I’d feel up to entertaining your story at all.”
The fire in Monica’s eyes faded and her face contorted as she calmed herself. “I’m sorry. I was out of line. You’re right. Can I show you something, though?”
“Sure,” Audrey said. “But I want you to answer me one question first: how did you even get in here?”
“I’m your sister, of course.”
“They bought that?”
“I think there’s too much else going on for them to worry about a frazzled woman trying desperately to visit her sister. Besides, I’ve gotten pretty good at forging comm card identification data.”
Audrey let out a weak laugh. She was suspicious of Monica but couldn’t quell her overwhelming curiosity and the instinctual desire to trust the feisty young woman.
Monica gave her a pitying look, but Audrey waved her off. The determined ex-NanoTech IT worker tapped quickly on her comm card, programming the device to sync with the holo on the wall. The projection came to life in a flash of blue. A live news stream of talking heads with carefully manicured hair and flashy background images of the Chicago skyline appeared.
Pressing her comm card, Monica turned up the volume just enough for the both of them to hear.
The image of a chestnut-skinned man with a five-o’clock shadow and weary eyes projected out toward Audrey and Monica. Then the view switched to a reporter.
“Cody Warren was arrested today and charged with acts of terrorism during the aftermath of the Chicago bombing,” the reporter said. “Warren is also suspected of several instances of threats sent via his comm card. Equipment and paraphernalia linked with the construction of devices with explosive potential were found in his apartment via police wall-thru detectors before the arrest was made. Chicago Police Chief Stanford Moore had this to say about the attack—”
Monica turned the volume back down. Audrey continued to watch the muted projections floating out from the wall. “They caught the bomber. Why did he do it?”
“They think they caught the bomber.” The emphasis in her statement indicated her skepticism.
“But you don’t.”
“No.”
Audrey exhaled, coughed, and cleared her throat. “Like I said, I’m not going anywhere.”
“I have reason to believe that Warren’s comm card was accessed by an outside party.”
“Really?”
“I studied computer science, and my friends and I had some less-than-savory hobbies, okay?” Monica spoke with fervor and increasing speed. “Some amateur inside LyfeGen used a basic bugging technique, effectively creating an invisible access port to Warren’s comm card. The only problem for this pseudo-hacker is that they made the idiotic mistake of accessing his comm card from within the LyfeGen office.”
“How do you know that?”
Monica smiled mischievously. “Big Brother.”
“Some kind of surveillance system?”
“Exactly. LyfeGen records all the outgoing and incoming data targets of its employees via some shady software called Work Place Efficiency Suite. Apparently, they installed the software shortly after Anil Nayak became CEO.”
“Interesting.” In her mind, Audrey outlined the first in a long series of stories regarding the recent developments at LyfeGen.
“Right?” Monica said, enthusiasm and excitement emphasized by two open, shaking hands. “It’s insane! I mean, I dug around to see if this was in employee contracts or anything, because I think it’s toying with lines of legality established by the Employee and Employer Relations Protection Act that passed last year. I can totally see this going to the Supreme Court.”
“Certainly,” Audrey said, “but let’s focus here.”
“Right, right. So, I mean, I know that someone made a call from inside the building. LyfeGen can easily track every employee’s registered comm card.”
“Okay, so who sent it? Whitney Brayson?”
Monica shook her head. “That’s the thing. It’s anonymous. It must’ve been someone with a burner card or something.”
“Burner card?”
“Yeah, you know, tracker cards you get at 7-Eleven or CVS. Pay-per-gigabit rather than a monthly plan. You can just pick them up, it tracks your data, all that.”
“Ah, I see.”
“Drug dealers like ’em.”
“I’m sure,” Audrey said. “Tell me: you have no idea who use
d this card to access Warren’s comm card? And no one else knows about this?”
“Not yet, they don’t. If I had to guess, I’d say it comes back to Whitney. I found traces of programming activity on Whitney’s computer, too. She’d deleted the files, but I recovered enough to suspect her of having some old-fashioned hacking hobbies of her own.”
Audrey thought over everything for a moment. Pieces of Monica’s story came together. Then again, it could be the painkillers clouding her judgment and encouraging her to agree with the story. She wanted to believe that the solution had come to her, that her scoop had walked right into the room, plopped down, and given her everything she needed to ensure a prosperous and fruitful career as an investigative journalist.
“Okay,” she finally said. “I’m ready to begin writing a draft of all this.”
Monica’s face lit up. “Great!”
“But I need to check in with another source to see if I can verify any of this before I put it on the news stream.” Audrey instinctively reached toward her pocket for her comm card, but recoiled from the pain of stretching so quickly. In the intense heat that shot up toward her shoulder, she reminded herself she was wearing a hospital gown. “First things first. Could you help me find my comm card?”
Chapter 42
Preston Carter
December 4, 2063
On the way out of Chicago, Preston drove while Matthew sat in the passenger seat. He didn’t wind between other cars and trucks with the same fury that had possessed the younger engineer, though he did push himself slightly beyond the speed limit and through yellow lights.
While Preston leaned into the steering wheel, Matthew slumped in his seat. His gaze rested somewhere between the car’s dashboard and his feet. Preston didn’t take the time to study the man or question him regarding his abrupt mood change. His focus rested on the task at hand, which meant driving ferociously to an office in the Chicago suburb of Foxwood.
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