What Tomorrow May Bring

by Tony Bertauski

  I tossed the dart gun onto the bed. Dashing into the closet, I grabbed one of Kestrel’s jackets and a white dress shirt. I tugged the silver and blue passring off his limp hand and at the last minute, decided to wipe my prints off the dart gun and the other gun I had buried in the dresser drawer. I sprinted out of his apartment and took the stairs to the basement two at a time.

  Laney was running out of time.

  chapter THIRTY-FOUR

  Cold frosted the air in the basement parking garage.

  I used Kestrel’s passring to unlock his tiny blue hydro car, and I slipped inside to change into his clothes, tucking my disposable silver phone into the pocket of his oversized coat. I kept the Cubs hat, wrapping my hair into a knot and tucking it up under the cap. Even with rolling up the sleeves, his coat was still way too big, and of course, I looked nothing like Kestrel. But if I kept the hat low on my face, I might not raise alarms on the base surveillance cameras.

  I linked into the mindware and set an autopath to the naval station. The adrenaline from my encounter with Kestrel faded on the way, and my eyelids drooped. The house lights blurred as the car wove through an endless stream of side streets. I forced my eyes wide-open again. Nodding off wasn’t a good idea.

  I’d given Kestrel a triple dose of the juice, like I’d gotten in the camp, but his body had already fought off half the first dart. When he woke up, the cuffs and lack of memory would slow him down, but he would surely notice his passring was missing. I cursed myself for forgetting to take his phone. He might piece it together and call ahead to warn them.

  In any event, I had to get Laney before they injected her with any more “medicine.” A midnight sneak-and-rescue wasn’t the best idea I’d ever had, but daytime on base property wouldn’t be any better.

  The hospital was right off the main drive, easy to find, and my dad had brought us on base a few times, mostly for trips to the hospital for broken bones (my brother) and appendicitis (me). But that was different than spiriting someone out of a secure prison in the basement.

  I switched to manual controls as I got close. The front drive looped around and ran past the main gate and a smaller entrance that led to the hospital. I turned into the guard station and hoped that a late-night visit by Kestrel wasn’t enough to draw the portly guard out of his comfortable shack.

  Keeping my head down so that the hat shielded my face, I waved Kestrel’s passring at the ID scanner and jacked an image of his smiling face into the guard’s head. The guard gave me an uncertain wave as the scanner flashed green. I reminded myself that Kestrel wasn’t exactly the friendly type and killed the smile. I took the guard’s wave as a pass to move on.

  The hospital stood a couple hundred yards past the gate, spotlights lighting up the white bricks and leaving the corners in jagged shadows. I clenched the joystick. The parking lot to the right was nearly empty and I managed to avoid crashing into the few cars there.

  The hospital was close enough that I could reach all fifteen levels from the car. I quickly located two guards that knew classified things happened in the basement—a reader at the front desk scanning a bank of camera images and a jacker guarding a corridor in the basement. The jacker’s mind barrier was the hardest I’d ever felt, like granite under my whisper reach. I jerked back when he had a glimmer of awareness of my presence.

  I wished I had saved one of those darts I used on Kestrel.

  Besides the guard, the basement held two medical personnel and eight inmates. The prisoners were all unconscious, with six sleeping under a light dose of the juice and the other two under heavy sedation. They were all changelings, and I searched each one until I found Laney.

  I gently probed for those soft dead spots that I had felt in the returnees to the camp. Only her typical nightmares raged through her head as she slept. Whatever they had injected her with so far hadn’t done any major damage. I sighed in relief and nudged her dreams toward a happy park scene with her family. I projected myself into her dream and told her I was coming for her. Soon. I would check the rest of the changelings after I got them out.

  The jacker guard in the basement was going to be a problem. And getting eight kids out unnoticed? I had no idea how that was going to work. Especially when two of them were knocked out. Besides, the eight of them wouldn’t fit into Kestrel’s tiny car.

  As I sat in the parking lot, pondering my options, the answer drove past my nose. A linen service truck rumbled by, headed away from the hospital. I jacked into the driver’s mind and ordered him to return to the loading dock, which was deserted. I put him under a command to fold sheets in the back of the truck, but I wasn’t sure how long that would last. All the more reason to get in and out quickly, before our ride remembered he had somewhere else to be. I hustled to the main entrance of the hospital where the camera-watching guard was stationed.

  People milled about in the reception area, visitors and patients waiting for their appointments or to see their loved ones. It was surprisingly busy for so late at night, but I guess sickness didn’t have a schedule.

  A janitor was cleaning the glass windows of the gift shop, and a guard and receptionist waited at a large, central check-in desk. I easily jacked the dozen people in the lobby to look the other way, but I nearly stumbled over my own feet when I linked into the janitor’s mind and he struggled unsuccessfully to push me back out. We locked stares for a moment before I pulled out of his mind and he slowly turned back to his window and resumed cleaning. I lightly brushed his mind, and it was soft like a changeling’s, even though he looked at least thirty-five.

  Linker. That explained why he hadn’t reacted to my feather touch before and I must have missed him. He seemed willing to ignore me, and I certainly didn’t need any extra trouble.

  I focused on the guard and receptionist. They needed to believe I was Kestrel, just checking in on the patients in the basement. That way I wouldn’t have to jack the camera guard all the time while I was busy rescuing changelings. If he saw me on camera, traveling through the hospital, and he thought I was Kestrel, he wouldn’t sound any alarms. It might buy me a little time.

  I kept my cap low and waved Kestrel’s passring by the scanner. When I jacked Kestrel’s image into the receptionist’s mind, I didn’t smile or wave and planned to brusquely stride past.

  But she smiled instead of waving me through. Late night, Agent Kestrel? There was a casual flirtation in her thoughts and a background hope that he might stop for coffee this time. I cringed internally and tried to figure out Kestrel’s most likely response.

  A tight smile seemed about right. Yeah. Never ends, does it?

  She flashed a brighter smile, not expecting that much. Maybe some coffee when you’re done?

  I put some warmth into Kestrel’s smile, but my stomach was a hard knot. Maybe next time. I’ll be a while tonight. She was only mildly disappointed. Luckily, the whole interchange had the effect of making the camera-watching guard avert his eyes and return his attention to the celebrity magazine on his tablet.

  I kept my pace measured, but quickly turned the corner to the central elevator bank. There were no stairwells. In the cancer ward next door, the minds of the attendants told me the stairs I needed were in the back corner of the hospital. That would work well for my plan to sneak the inmates out through the loading dock and must be how secret patients were usually transported in and out of the hospital.

  I pulled open the ward’s double doors and jacked minds to look the other way as I strode past curtained beds and medical equipment. To have any hope of taking on Granite Guard downstairs, I needed help. A nurse hurried past, making rounds and administering medications. I commandeered her and her tray of meds, but none of them were high-powered sedatives. She had the authority to sign meds out of the lockup, which I directed her to do. She estimated it would take several minutes for a syringe full of sedatives to take effect.

  I was really regretting not bringing the dart gun. I decided to commandeer a very large orderly as well.

 
The three of us—the nurse armed with her syringe, the burly orderly, and me with my Impenetrable Mind—left the ward together. I hoped that Granite Guard wouldn’t sense me coming. The blank spot of my mind should be invisible next to the nurse and orderly, as long as he didn’t detect my presence in their minds. Kestrel’s passring got us past the scanner at the stairwell door, and we descended the metal staircase, our footsteps echoing loudly off the white concrete walls. I reached back to check that the camera-watching guard wasn’t alarmed by my unusual escorts. Then again, maybe Kestrel brought people down here all the time.

  Down one flight of stairs was a door labeled 1B. The stairs continued down another level, but this was the door from Kestrel’s forced memories. I very gingerly reached out to brush Granite Guard’s mind and yanked back when he immediately sensed my presence. That might have lost us the element of surprise, which was almost all we had in our favor. I quickly pressed the passring to the door scanner and punched in the code. It opened to a short, gray concrete hallway with Granite Guard sitting in a chair at the far end, propped up against a metal door. His fatigues complemented the military weapons magazine he was reading.

  His head snapped up as soon as we stepped through the door.

  I needed to get closer before he figured out what was wrong, but it was too late. We’d only gone a few steps down the thirty foot hallway, when he pushed me out of the nurse and orderly’s minds and pressed on mine. I jacked back in, and they stopped in their tracks, while he and I wrestled in their minds. The guard charged toward me. I could barely press on his mind barrier, much less control him.

  I grabbed the syringe out of the nurse’s hand. When Granite Guard reached me, I whirled and shoved the syringe into his neck, hoping to get lucky and hit a vein. He roared and yanked out the syringe, and it clattered on the concrete floor. He closed his enormous hand around my throat and pinned me against the wall. All of his attention was focused on trying to jack into my mind. Stars swam before my eyes, but instead of fighting Granite Guard, I jacked the orderly, who grabbed the guard from behind and caused him to lose his grip on me.

  I fell hard to the floor and scrambled away. The nurse stood like a frozen mannequin, so I commanded her to grab the guard as well. While the orderly and nurse clung to him like errant children, I sprinted down the corridor to the door. I waved Kestrel’s passring by the control pad and punched in the code as quickly as I could.

  Then I saw the gun.

  The guard had managed to pull it out while wrestling with the nurse and orderly. I yanked open the door, flung myself inside, and pulled it shut behind me. I didn’t hear any shots.

  Safe behind the locked door, I jacked with all my might into the guard’s mind. The sedative must have gone in, because his mind was slowly weakening as it took hold. He kept trying to work himself free of the orderly and nurse’s grip, but it was a losing battle between my jacking and the sedative, and he soon slumped to the floor. I ordered the nurse to take the gun and keep watch over him until I got back.

  The next time I infiltrated a jacker prison, I was definitely bringing a dart gun.

  My gasping breaths echoed down the hallway, which appeared identical to the image in Kestrel’s mind. Doors with small, high windows lined the corridor, and the smell of antiseptic pervaded the air. A frosted-glass double door loomed at the end.

  I ran from door to door, using the passring to unlock them, and threw the doors open. Each room held a changeling, four boys and three girls, except for one with an empty bed. None were Laney. She must be already in the medical room. I swiped Kestrel’s passring to open the glass doors and surprised the two camouflage-clad technicians inside. They were readers, so I froze them, not wanting to knock them out in case I needed them.

  Laney lay strapped to a gurney and hooked to an IV. An array of probes was attached to a skullcap on her head, and the med techs had been preparing to inject something into her. I tugged off the cap and shoved the tray of syringes away from her bedside. She was still under the effects of the gas, but it was muted. I slowly jacked her out of her gas-induced sleep while I unhooked the IV and started undoing the straps.

  “Kira?” she said when she opened her eyes. “You’re really here? I had a dream about you.”

  “Yeah. I’m really here.” My throat choked up, so I didn’t try to explain any further. I gently probed her mind to see if they had injected anything other than the juice. She seemed fine.

  I cleared my throat. “Can you walk?” She nodded, and I helped her up from the bed. An alarm blared through the room and startled us both so much we almost toppled over. Keeping my grip on Laney, I reached with my mind up to the main floor. The camera-watching guard had seen a video sweep of the disabled guard in the hallway and sounded a security alert. I jacked him to disable the alarm, but I was sure it was too late. This was a military base, and other security personnel would be on the way soon. I knocked him out.

  “What was that?” Laney asked.

  “Time for us to go.” I ordered the med techs to come with us as I hurried to the double glass doors. A large sign hung on a refrigerator next to the door: “No Food or Drink.” I remembered Kestrel’s warning that I couldn’t stop them, that they would keep doing their research no matter what. I could save these changelings, but there would always be others to take their place.

  I yanked open the refrigerator door, and racks of liquid filled vials clinked together. The labels were covered with medical terms I didn’t understand, but one rack stood separate from the rest on the top shelf. Messy handwriting had scrawled across it: K. Moore.

  A chill ran through me. My blood… or something… my DNA for sure. How could they have possibly gotten it? Then I remembered I had already been through a similar gray corridor with doors. Doors with small, high windows.

  I had been here before.

  When Kestrel interrogated me, I had assumed I was in an FBI building, but I wasn’t. I was here in the hospital. I jacked into the minds of the med techs and found that there was another holding facility—directly below us. The stairwell past door 1B must lead down to another level where they kept prisoners.

  I reached down one floor—there wasn’t anyone in the holding rooms below.

  The polished steel cabinets and cold, tiled floor of the medical room felt familiar. Had I been in this room? Had they taken me here, unconscious like Laney, and experimented on me? A shiver ran up my back and made my hair stand up. Was I different because Kestrel did something to me?

  Someone like me, or even stronger, in Kestrel’s hands… it had to be stopped.

  I grabbed the chilled vials with my name on them and slipped them into Kestrel’s coat pocket, trading them for the silver phone I had stolen. I dialed the number I had memorized.

  Maria answered on the first ring. “Hello?”

  “I found them.” My voice squeaked, so I cleared it. “But it’s even worse than I thought.” I switched the phone to video streaming mode and panned the room, so she could see the gurney with the straps, the trays of syringes, the two camouflaged med-techs standing still with their glassy-eyed looks.

  “Did you get that?” I spoke quietly.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “It’s the basement of the Naval hospital, where they’ve been experimenting on the changelings.” I pointed the phone at the still open refrigerator, filled with racks of vials. “You need to stop them, Maria. Make sure everyone knows what’s going on here.”

  “I need a witness. Someone to verify this before I can tru-cast it. Turn the camera on your face. Talk to me. Tell me what you’ve found.”

  “Are you recording all this?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I imagined what Kestrel would do to my dad if he found out I had exposed his crimes. My plan was to run, hide, make a new life after freeing the changelings. If I went on camera, there would be no hiding after that. And that was assuming we got out alive, which wasn’t going to happen if I stuck around doing an exposé on the medical torment
chamber.

  I swallowed hard. “I can’t.”

  “But…”

  I clicked off the phone and then swept my arm through the refrigerator and dumped racks of vials on the floor. Maybe I could slow Kestrel down. Some of them broke on impact, and some went skittering across the floor, making a hazardous mess. I stomped the vials closest to me and ground the glass under the heel of my shoe, but I quickly realized I didn’t have time to destroy them all.

  Laney tugged on my arm. “Kira.”

  I mind-swept the floors above us. Additional security guards gathered around the camera-watching guard, trying to decipher why he had switched on the alarm, then turned it off, only to pass out. They were all readers, so I knocked them out as well.

  That added to the general mayhem and would hopefully keep people busy—and away from the loading dock—for a little while.

  I ordered the two med techs to smash the remaining vials and let Laney tug me out of the experiment room. The alarm and the open doors had woken the changelings and drawn them out into the hallway. Two remained in their cots, under heavy sedation. We would need help to get them out, so I redirected the med techs to retrieve the changelings from their cells and linked into the minds of the other six dazed inmates, including Laney.

  Follow me, and I’ll get you out of here.

  Their bare feet padded behind me as I raced to the exit door. The nurse still held the gun on the downed jacker guard. I took the gun and ordered her and the orderly to help the med techs, struggling with their burden of the heavily sedated changelings. They gripped each of the limp inmates by the shoulders and feet, like dead bodies.

  Yeah, not suspicious-looking at all.

  The gun was cold and creepy in my hand as I led the small posse of jacker kids, an orderly, a nurse, and two med techs out of the medical prison and up the stairs.

  If anyone was watching the cameras, they’d have quite a show.