The Yellow Pill

by Chaves, Michelle

  Jin straightened his leg so he could empty his pocket.

  The Yellow Pills spilled out in his palm.

  Father Patrick looked at the open package. His body language showed nothing, but his eyes burned with hatred at the drug that destroyed so many lives. Jin could only imagine how many he had followed throughout the years, only to see them end with that little Yellow pill.

  Jin could practically hear what Father Patrick was thinking.

  “I haven’t touched any of them.”

  The old man looked up at his face with such an expression of hope than Jin felt pride warm his insides. Pride that he was actually telling the truth.

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing.” Jin held them up to Father Patrick. “The reason is that I finally took a good long look at them.” Jin knew the old man knew they were supposed to be without a barcode.

  Surprise came over Father Patrick’s face as he studied the addition. His hand went up to rub his jaw. “Someone can’t have been making copies of it?” He whispered behind his hand.

  Jin shook his head. “These were everywhere, the whole gang territory filled with them.” The old man certainly didn’t need to know all the greasy details. “The gangs all thought they had been tricked by each other. When I left, the west gang just showed up, and it seems they all have the same problem with.” Jin was leaning close to the old man, keeping his voice down even as the screams from the city almost drowning out his words.

  The old man was nodding as if it all made sense. He sat silent for a while. “How did it make you feel?” Father Patrick asked after a while.

  “What?”

  The old man held up the pill. “How did it make you feel when you saw this? What stayed your hand?”

  He shrugged his shoulders slowly. “I don’t know. It just felt wrong.”

  “Why?” The old man asked, pushing him. The tone told Jin that he had some kind of answer in mind, but also knew Father Patrick wanted his version first.

  “Because it felt wrong. It a bloody…” Jin reminded himself they might not be totally alone up on the roof.

  “It’s a product now,” Father Patrick said. “It’s always been a product, but now more than ever.”

  “What makes you say that?” Jin asked.

  Father Patrick lifted one eyebrow. “This is the real deal.” Jin frowned in confusion. “Jin. This is the pill, same as always. I’m saying that because, what else would it be?”

  “But… but then why…”

  “That’s what I said before.” He tapped a finger to the ground where the word “tampered with” was written in the dirt.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Well what was the reaction? What was your reaction to it?”

  Jin saw the massacre again. He saw the scattered pills lying around, getting dissolved in blood and filth like they were no more than gravel on the ground. He saw himself stop as he saw the barcode.

  He hadn’t eaten it… and why was that? Why had tiny black numbers stopped him from satisfying his addiction?

  “Why didn’t I?” He asked, not knowing if he expected an answer or not.

  The old man had his smile still on his lips as he nodded up towards dome. “I think we might finally see it for what it is…” Father Patrick let the pill roll in his palm. “A product.” He leaned back and rested his head against the wall. “All hell is going to break loose, and we would be fools not to prepare for it…”

  Jin frowned. “Things can’t get much worse than they are, Father Patrick.”

  Three days later he was proven oh, so wrong.

  Chapter 15

  “The deserts dwellers have repositioned, and are now twelve miles to the west,” Luke said. “Getting them into the city is also proving to be very hard.” He turned his eyes to Jon. “How is Joy progressing?”

  Jon had his hands clapped behind his head. “Joy is working her arse off to try and crack the code. But seriously… it’s like nothing I have ever seen before…”

  “It seems you need a code just to view the cell. I have never, in all my years of research, heard protecting organic matter with this level of coding,” Li said, rubbing the bridge of his nose with thumb and index finger. “To think that they would go through the trouble is disturbing indeed.” He looked up at them and Frey knew he ought to look tired from the lack of sleep, but the doctor looked as healthy as ever. “I could write down the general ingredients of the pill. It’s how I make my research on digital cell generating. It is no secret how it is done. I can understand a certain economical reason for doing so, but this coding.” He shook his head. “It makes no sense at all.”

  “The amount of money they must have put into this, and not to mention the amount of work to do so…” Lallie said.

  “Whatever’s inside, they clearly don’t want you seeing it,” Frey said, pushing down the sick feeling in her stomach. There was a short pause that made her wonder if the fact hadn’t even crossed their minds. She hoped that wasn’t the case. “You think she’ll be able to crack the code?” Frey asked Jon, changing the subject.

  “Harry and Lallie are going down there later. If the three of them can’t do it, then I seriously doubt there’s anyone who can.” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hand.

  “Have some faith, man.” Harry said as his sister grinned.

  “So what do we do with the yellow pill?” Tina reminded them. “Stanly can’t do it,” Tina placing one of those glass screens on the table. She leaned her chair back until it clanked against the glass wall. Frey knew she wanted to put her feet up on the table, but also knew how little Luke liked her doing so. So she didn’t. Not when Luke was around, anyway. “He can’t smuggle one out. They are keeping an iron tight guard on the people leaving Base.”

  “How come they haven’t noticed the printing yet, then?” Frey asked.

  “They are checking people, not the export. The product goes straight to Dome. No human hands involved there.”

  “I mean inside Hole. Don’t they see what's happening? Can’t they see the barcode?”

  “I’m sure all they see is a huge mess right now, but if they had, we would have noticed it by now,” Lallie said, sipping her coffee.

  Frey clutched her glass of water, not having taken a liking to the strange taste of coffee. “So it’s impossible to get one of the Yellow Pills out,” she said, not really expecting an answer.

  “Well, there was one who did once,” Tina said, her voice very soft. Frey thought she heard something there, sadness maybe. “Security cranked up about a thousand notches after that.”

  “Where is the person now?” Luke asked. This was apparently news for them all.

  “He disappeared.”

  Frey felt a shiver grip her spine.

  “What do you mean ‘disappeared’?” Luke asked, his brow low over his eyes.

  “Stanly said he was acting all weird the last days they worked together, and then he stole inside information and ran away. They caught him a day later, and then he was just gone.”

  Jon gestured towards where Dome lay. “You mean they tossed him into Hole?”

  Tina just shrugged her shoulders. “Probably.”

  “And because of that Stanly can’t get a sample out to us,” Jon muttered.

  “Sounds like they’re using heavy precautions to guard their product,” Frey said.

  “It does indeed.” Li said, sounding like he was somewhere else in thought.

  “Shit!” Harry swore, falling back on his backrest again. “We need that Yellow Pill!”

  “Right now that doesn’t seem very promising.” Lallie reminded him.

  “No shit, Lallie.”

  “No fighting.” Luke rumbled.

  Jon and Frey exchanged glances. She knew what he was thinking. They were at a standstill. They had managed to mark the pills and get them to Hole, and to judge by the hysteric reports from Dome, it seemed to be working. Their Intel was letting them know there was full on chaos in there. Dome had their hands
full trying to manage it.

  The brief recordings from Frey had seen from Hole, had frightened her. Already there was war in there.

  What if we get the walls down only to find a sea of corpses in there… Shaking the dark thought away, she turned her attention back to the table.

  “It’s so frustrating!” Tina moaned at the roof. “We have our game pieces in place, but we can’t use any of them! We can’t get into Dome, or get the pill out of Base, cuss the security’s too high, we can’t get the desert dwellers into Alya, cuss the security’s too high and we can’t crack the code, cuss security’s too bloody high!”

  “Joy’s doing her best she can down there,” Jon said, sounding defensive. “And we don’t know how to approach Dome yet. We need a plan.”

  “I thought we had one,” Harry said. “Get in, shut the projection of the dome off, lower the walls, riot comes out, and we stay out of the way, safe and sound.”

  “Brilliant, brother,” Lallie said.

  “Always, sister.”

  “You two stop it,” Luke warned again.

  Li sighed loudly and shook his head.

  “If we can get the walls down, then we can even out the odds in numbers against the government patrols, right?” Frey asked.

  “Yeah, but Frey…” Tina said. “The people of Hole… they will be weak.”

  Li was the one who answered. “Not really. Desperate people can be very strong.” He looked at them all and stopped at Frey. “That is why we need to act soon, so they can use that strength outside before Dome goes in there and decide to put an end to things. And they will.”

  “If we can create a diversion using the desert dwellers, we could force the government to focus at the edges of the city. It would make it easier to get inside Dome,” Frey said.

  “But the desert dwellers are outside. Can’t get them inside, remember?” Harry said. Outlining the obvious.

  Jon turned to him. “We don’t need them to be inside. They can create a diversion just outside the city.”

  “That would be enough to make the government come running. They hate when the desert people come close.” Lallie said and elbowed her twin with a grin. “Man, this is goanna be epic!”

  Li looked at Lallie and Harry. “You two go down and join Joy. She will need all the help she can get right now. And Harry, see if you can work on getting into their network again. We can’t stop trying.”

  Lallie and Harry didn’t have to be told twice. The two ‘foxes’ hurried out of the room and were gone.

  Luke shoved off the wall. “I will take the jute and go meet up with Home camp. I’m taking the idea to them first before we plan anything else. See what they think.” Luke clapped Jon on the shoulder before walking out.

  Tina put her feet on the table with a frown. “Hmm. We still need to figure out how to get into Dome. I can get a map of the first four floors easy, all exits and windows included. But inside Dome’s goanna be harder.” She looked at Li. “If we could get a digital scanning of the building, we could pinpoint the control room. Your fancy friends don’t happen to have any contacts, would they?”

  Li scratched his smooth chin. It had taken a while for Frey to get used to the sigh of most men being clean-shaven.

  She glanced at Jon. “Digital scanning?” She asked.

  “It’s a model of the building. A very accurate holographic projection you can alter the view of anyway you want.”

  “It’s not going to be easy to copy one, but I think I know where I might be able to at least get a part of it. Do you know where the control room might be? In that case, I could minimize the rendering time by far,” Li asked Tina.

  She shook her head, but then held up her finger. “Sure? No. But I think it might be positioned at the top floor, on the south side.”

  “What makes you say that?” Jon asked her.

  “Sun comes up in west and down in the east, right? Well, the best view would be from the South. The sun even travels from left to right, like reading a book.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Alright then, top floor to the south,” Jon concluded. “It’s worth a try,” he added with a little laugh.

  “That it is,” Li said as he gathered his papers.

  Chapter 16

  “What about the fifth level?” Frey asked, tapping her lower lip. “You’re saying there are fingerprint key-cards there as well?”

  “Well, no. Not that our Intel know of. But Frey,” Tina said. “It’s five levels up. It’s not goanna help us to get in.”

  Frey caught Jon looking at her. “You’re not thinking of climbing it, are you?” It wasn’t just the way he looked… it was the way he talked, the way he moved, and the things he said that made it seem all so unreal.

  There was something really strange going on here and she knew that sooner or later she would have to tell them about it. Somehow it was all connected. She was sure of it.

  “That’s crazy, Frey! The building’s made of glass. There are no handholds.” Tina pushed off the table with her feet, her hand hitting the tabletop at the same time as the feet of the chair did.

  “There are handholds,” Frey said. “Where the glass merge there’s about a two centimeters gap between the sheets of glass. That’s enough with the proper shoes.” Tina opened her mouth again. “And!” Frey interrupted. “I’ve climbed buildings since I was just a little brat. Its how I survived in Hole many times.”

  Tina broke the eye contact, scratching the back of her head. “Man. Sometimes it’s hard to remember where you come from.”

  “It’s a glass building.” Jon reminded them. “It’s see-through…”

  “And Dome keeps their storage rooms on the east side. If we can somehow ditch the cameras on the east side, and time the climbing to when they make their rounds, then we can get her up to level five without being noticed. She wouldn’t even have to use a glasscutter. There’s a balcony up there,” Tina reminded him right back.

  Frey had a strange feeling that Jon wanted her to climb the building about as much as Jin would have.

  “How come you know so much about the exterior of it?” Frey asked.

  “Anyone can access the global 3D mapping. With it, we can see the whole building from the outside.”

  Jon tilted his coffee cup with one finger, balancing it on the edge. “So let’s say you get up there, then what?” He wasn’t looking at her.

  “I sneak back to the lobby, and open the doors.” She gestured to the computer room just outside their meeting room. “Whatever group is assigned to go with me will wait close by.” She looked at Tina.

  “Dressed the same as the people in Dome,” Tina said.

  Jon let go of the cup and it clattered back on its base. He crossed his long arms, not looking happy at all.

  “Jon. You have to admit it’s a good plan,” Tina said.

  “It is…” He said, scratching his chin with his thumb, not unhooking his arms. “I just don’t… think it’s very safe.” He glanced at Frey when he said it.

  “Nothing is. This is all a big gamble, Jonas, and we’re gambling with so much more than just our lives right now.”

  “I know that.” Again he looked at Frey. “We all do.”

  She walked to the black elevator to the right, prints under one arm. The equipment was far more advanced down here, and Frey guessed they needed the extra security of depth to make sure the machines stayed untraceable.

  In the middle was a half-moon shaped desk hovering in the air, above it a massive glowing keyboard projection spread out over the surface.

  Harry and Lallie’s fingers sped over it. They both had their eyes on one wall each, their heads turning this way and that to cover the big space and the flickering images. White chairs stood to the sides, and Frey saw that these too hovered in the air like the table. There was a soft blue glow coming from under them.

  Frey clenched her teeth from keeping her mouth from opening, and carefully walked into the room, her body tense, waiting for large cracks to appe
ar under her feet.

  Damn all this glass!

  A young woman was standing in front of the hovering table, swiping at images. She stopped and turned as Frey’s footsteps made a faint echo.

  She was beautiful. Long blond hair fell straight down her back. It was gleaming as if she had spent hours just brushing it. Her face was long with high cheekbones, and her eyes were a clear blue. She was tall and very slim. There didn’t seem to be much muscle on her at all, but Frey suspected men found her very hard to resist. Her fair looks contrasted to Frey’s, and suddenly Frey didn’t feel so clean anymore. The woman’s lips were full and she had two very distinct dimples as she smiled.

  She did that now, but somehow Frey thought it didn’t look quite friendly. It was more the way a cat might look at a mouse before it decided to play with it.

  “Oh, it’s the one from Hole.”

  Frey held out the papers to her, the other hand in her pocket to avoid shaking hands with her. She avoided shaking hands with people she didn’t like. “Frey. Not “the one”,” Frey said with a calm she certainly didn’t feel.

  The young woman just made a silly giggling sound, and clapped her hand to her cheek as if she was talking to a child. “Oh, I’m sure you are. Well, thank you for bringing me the papers.” Frey imagined breaking her wrist it with a snap of hers. “My name is Joy. We need to concentrate, so if you want to stay you have to be silent.”

  Frey again imagined doing some damage to that tall frame. She didn’t like that Joy was bending her knees slightly as if calling a dog to her feet.

  Frey moved over to the back of the room, leaning against the wall and trying not to let her anger boil her insides sore. The chairs were rowed next to her on both sides, but she would rather not try her luck with them. Frey suspected she would never truly get used to this.

  Damn, that I promised Jon I would wait for him here. Frey crossed her arms and watched the three moving and sorting the amount of text around them. A few times they came together in the middle, standing around a certain part of information and talking in low voices.

  Jon entered the room with Tina in tow, both carrying more papers.