SIck

by Brett Battles

  “My God,” Tamara said.

  The image zoomed in, intending, it seemed, to identify the people in the suits. But the angle was making it difficult, and the suit masks weren’t helping. Still, the camera operator was able to hold on two of them just long enough to get an idea of what they looked like.

  Tamara tensed. “You’re recording this, right?”

  Bobby nodded. “Every second.”

  She said nothing for a moment, willing herself to remain as calm as possible. “Bobby, can you bring up that video of the soldiers from the helicopters that landed here?”

  He gave her an odd look but said, “Sure.”

  He punched a few buttons, and the report he’d been working on earlier disappeared from its monitor, replaced by the requested shots.

  “Scroll ahead to that part where you were trying to zoom in for me,” she said.

  He sped up the footage.

  “There,” she told him a few seconds later. “Back it up a little bit, then let it play.”

  He did. On the screen they watched the soldiers talk together, then the picture zoomed in quickly, rushing past Gavin’s killer and focusing for a few moments on the interior of the helicopter. Just like she remembered, there was a clump of something yellow on the seat.

  “Freeze there,” she said. Once the shot stopped moving, she looked at the other two. “Am I seeing things?”

  Both men stared at the screen, then looked back at the network feed.

  “Son of a bitch,” Bobby said under his breath.

  The yellow clump looked very much like one of the bio-suits worn by the people in the desert canyon.

  “Hold on,” Joe said, shaking his head. “I’m sure all crews have been outfitted with these kinds of suits. They probably all look alike.”

  “I’m sure you’re right,” Tamara said. “But then that means you’re also conceding those people in the video are part of the military.”

  Joe didn’t have a response to that.

  “There’s something else,” she said.

  Once the network finished playing the desert clip, Tamara had Bobby go back to where the kid whose friends had been shot zoomed in on the biohazard face masks. Bobby paused on the image she requested, then went back to the footage he’d shot of the men outside the helicopter there at Fort Irwin. Once more, she had him pause on an image.

  She didn’t have to say anything.

  The features and expression of the man on the left screen were exactly the same as the features and expression of the man on the right.

  “I want to talk to whoever shot that footage,” she said.

  Without looking away from the screen, Joe said, “Let me see what I can do.”

  35

  The door Chloe opened led into a dark section of the building that was obviously built into the side of the hill. Ash moved past her into the room, swinging the light around to get a quick take on the space. But he barely registered anything before the overhead lights came on.

  He whirled around. Chloe was standing by the door, her hand next to a switch.

  Power in this decrepit building?

  It seemed odd, but then, as he looked around, he realized the room he was in wasn’t decrepit at all. It was clean, almost sterile—white walls, black-tiled floors, no dust, no mud. Even the air smelled pure. It was as if they’d been transported out of the abandoned building they’d been in, and into a brand new hospital a million miles away.

  The room wasn’t particularly large. There were benches against two sides and a row of empty bins along the wall.

  Chloe pulled open the only other door in the room and passed through. As Ash followed, she switched on a light in the new space. They were in a corridor, with a dozen doors leading off it in either direction.

  “They’re gone. Definitely,” she said.

  “If they were here at all.”

  She looked at him. “Let’s check.”

  She began opening doors. Behind each were shorter hallways with what appeared to be a nurse’s station near the front, and anywhere from three to five doors on either side. These spaces were as immaculate as the first room had been.

  Starting at the far end, Chloe and Ash entered each hall and went door to door, checking inside. Each door opened onto an empty room. It wasn’t hard to imagine the rooms were designed to hold a bed, and that each of these small hallways was like a hospital ward.

  “What do they use this for?” he asked.

  Chloe said, “Whatever they want.”

  That seemed to be all the answer she was willing to give. Ash noticed that with each new ward they entered, she seemed to draw more and more into herself.

  So far, they had found nothing. As Ash approached the door for the next ward, Chloe said, “Not that one.”

  “Why not?”

  She walked past him to the next door down. “We’ll try this one.”

  But it was as empty as the others, and so were the final two after that.

  “We haven’t checked that one yet,” he said, nodding at the door they’d skipped.

  She stared across the hall at it for several seconds, then finally said, “Okay.”

  When he opened the door, the new ward looked exactly like all the others. He walked in and checked the first room. Empty. As he stepped back out, he noticed that Chloe was standing in the ward doorway, her feet not having crossed the threshold.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  She gave him a quick nod, but didn’t say anything.

  He knew this must have been where she’d been imprisoned. He wondered what they’d done to her, what had affected her so deeply.

  He walked over to the room directly across the hall and looked inside. It was a mirror image of the first room. He moved to the room next door—same again—then crossed over to its opposite.

  When he flicked on the light this time, he got a surprise. The room was furnished. There were two hospital beds, two tables that could be rolled into position so a patient could use them, a padded chair by the door, and a cabinet between the beds.

  He walked all the way in.

  “What is it?” Chloe called out.

  “This one’s not empty.”

  There were no sheets on the beds, but the mattresses themselves looked new. He leaned down to take a cautious sniff. Neither smelled of age or decay.

  He checked the cabinet, then searched the rest of the room to see if anything had been left behind. The only thing he came up with was a hair, thin and brown and long, that had fallen between the mattress and the headboard of one of the beds. It could have belonged to a million different people, a billion even, but it could have also belonged to Josie. Had his children really been here? Was it possible?

  He carefully rolled up the hair, put it in the change pocket of his jeans, then continued searching the room but found nothing else. When he turned to leave he was surprised to see Chloe standing at the door.

  “I…I had the same kind of bed,” she said, her eyes flicking to the left down the hall, unconsciously looking in the direction of the room Ash assumed had been hers. “But it was…it was only me. Your kids are lucky they have each other.”

  “There’s no way to know if they have each other,” Ash said. “I don’t even know if they were really here.” He looked back toward the beds, trying to hold himself together. “The only thing we know for sure is that they aren’t here now.”

  When he looked back, Chloe wasn’t in the doorway any more. He exited the room, assuming she’d be back at the ward door, but instead she was standing in the middle of the hall, staring at the last room on the right.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “There’s no reason to stay here.”

  But as he took a step toward the exit, she didn’t move.

  “Chloe?”

  Without looking at him, she said, “Matt’s…Matt’s inside person…is the same one who helped me.” The words were obviously causing her a great deal of distress, but Ash couldn’t understand why. “He would…leave me…m
essages. You know…so I’d know I wasn’t…alone. That helped me to survive.”

  “You don’t need to torture yourself like this,” Ash said. “Come on.”

  “Matt told him I was coming with you,” she went on as if she hadn’t heard him. “If something…changed, he…might have left me…a note.”

  Ash took a step toward her, suddenly hopeful. “A note?”

  She continued to stare at the door. “We don’t even know if…he got Matt’s initial message…but if…if…if he did…”

  “If he did, what, Chloe?”

  She took a couple of deep breaths. “He would probably leave it somewhere only I would know.”

  “Where?”

  The silence stretched out for a dozen seconds, then she said in a barely audible voice, “In my room.”

  “It’s okay,” Ash said, trying to calm her down. “Just tell me where it is, and I’ll check.”

  Her head began shaking left and right. “No. I have to do it. It’s my spot. My place only.”

  Her breath shuttered in and out one more time, then she took a step toward the door, then another step and another, each coming quicker than the last. When she reached the room, she went inside without hesitating.

  Ash wasn’t sure what to do. Should he let her look on her own or should he help? When half a minute passed and she hadn’t reappeared, he decided he needed to see what was going on.

  As he opened the door, he could hear her sobbing.

  “Chloe?” he said, rushing in.

  She wasn’t there.

  “Chloe?”

  Another sob, this one from his left through the doorway to the bathroom. He found her inside on her knees in the middle of the tiled floor.

  He dropped down beside her. “Are you hurt?”

  She jumped when he touched her, surprised that he was there. “I can do this. I’ll be okay.”

  “Just let me help.”

  “I can do this,” she repeated, but didn’t move.

  Her put his arm around her shoulders. She tried to pull away again, but then she took another breath, this one longer and slower, and she let him leave his arm where it was.

  “What did they do to you?”

  She said nothing for several seconds, then finally turned and looked up at him. “I don’t remember.”

  “Well…that’s probably…good, right?” he said, realizing he shouldn’t have asked in the first place. “Maybe it’s best that way.”

  “No,” she said quickly. “You don’t understand. I don’t remember. Anything.”

  “What do you mean, anything? From when you were here?”

  Again, her head shook. “From before. I remember waking up here. I remember being strapped to the bed. I remember the needles and the pills and the tests. I remember all that. But anything that came before in my life? I don’t remember.” She looked around the room. “This place took my past from me.”

  Good God, Ash thought. “You don’t…know anything about your past?”

  “I know about it. My name used to be Lauren Scott. Matt and Rachel showed me family pictures, articles in the local paper where I apparently grew up, my college diploma. I even sat in a car down the street from my…my parents’ house, and watched them walk along the sidewalk. If I hadn’t been shown a photo of them, I would have never recognized them. They were just two people I didn’t know. I had no feelings for them whatsoever.” Her eyes narrowed. “These people took that from me. They took me from me. That’s who I can’t get back.”

  Ash wasn’t sure what to say. Was it better to remember that his wife was dead, and that he had two children who were in need of his help, or to be conscious of the fact you could remember nothing at all?

  She wiped a hand across her cheeks. “I’m sorry. This isn’t helping. We’re here to find your kids, not watch me break down.”

  “Don’t worry about it. You have every right to be upset.”

  She tried to smile, but failed, then said, “Help me up.”

  Once they were back on their feet, Ash asked, “Was there a note?”

  “I…I haven’t checked yet.” She stepped toward the shower. “It’s over here.”

  “I can get it.”

  “No. I’m okay now.”

  Whether she was or not, she was at least more in control of herself as she stepped into the shower stall. Water for the shower was controlled by a handle that could be moved left or right. Behind the handle was a concave metal plate that curved into the wall. Chloe pressed her fingertips around the edge of the plate, then twisted it to the left. It moved about two inches, then slipped out of whatever clamp was holding it in place. She moved it as far out as the still-attached handle would allow, then reached into the gap behind it. When she pulled her hand back, there was a piece of paper between her fingers.

  Ash tried to temper his anticipation. The paper could still be nothing. A note from when she’d been here before, perhaps, or…or…

  She unfolded it, read what was there, then showed it to him.

  There was a date at the top, that day’s date, and a time, ten a.m., with the word “gone” after it. That meant as few as six hours before, Josie and Brandon had still been there. The next part read:

  Kids still alive. Taking to NB7.

  Alive. They’re alive. But what did he mean by “still”? Did that mean their time was almost up?

  “What does NB7 mean?” Ash asked.

  “It’s the way the others refer to their different facilities. They each have alpha-numeric designations.”

  “Do you know where this place is?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve never heard of it.”

  Ash felt his world start to crumble. He’d been so close. He put a hand over his eyes, and could feel the pressure in his head building. He had to do something, but he didn’t know what.

  Chloe touched his back. “Hey. We’re not done yet. There’s someone who might know.”

  He looked at her. “There is?”

  She hesitated. “Yes. A woman named Olivia.”

  “Can we call her?”

  Chloe shook her head. “We can’t call. We need to go see her.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Not too far, I think. Maybe an hour, hour and a half away. Matt’s the one who knows exactly where she is.”

  Without even hesitating, Ash pulled out his phone and called the emergency number Pax had given him.

  36

  Rachel entered Matt’s office as he was finishing up his call with Ash.

  “Did they find the children?” she asked when her brother hung up.

  “The place had already been cleared out.”

  “Oh, no.”

  “It’s not as bad as it could have been. Winger was able to leave a message. They’ve taken the kids to someplace called NB7.”

  “Is that on our list?”

  “No. I checked while we were talking.” He paused for a moment, then looked at his sister. “Chloe suggested Olivia might know where it is.”

  “Olivia?” Rachel frowned. “Even if she does, she might not tell them.”

  “You don’t think it’s worth trying?”

  Rachel looked out the window. Her history with Olivia was not a particularly pleasant one. “Does it matter? You’ve already sent them to the Bluff, haven’t you?”

  He adjusted himself uncomfortably in his chair. “If you can think of any other way to find out in a hurry, I’m more than open to it. But, yes, I’ve already sent them there.”

  Rachel stared at the distant hills, knowing her brother had done the right thing, but also not sure if she would have done the same if it had been up to her. Of course, truth be told, if it had been up to her, Olivia would have been dead a long time ago.

  Finally, she turned back to him and set the paper she’d been carrying on the desk. “We have another situation.”

  Matt read the message. “Damn.”

  “I think there’s a better than fifty-percent chance we’re going to have to perform an extra
ction,” she said.

  He glanced through the message again, then nodded. “Keep a close eye on it, and get everything in place.”

  “I have a truck already on its way.”

  He eyed her suspiciously.

  “It’s going in with a CDC pass,” she said. “There won’t be any problems.”

  “Still, an extraction’s going to be tricky, given the location.”

  “But not impossible.”

  “No. Not impossible.”

  • • •

  At Bluebird, a similar high-level conference was being held. The Director of Preparation—who, among other things, oversaw Dr. Karp’s work and the operation Mr. Shell was heading up to keep a lid on things—and two of his counterparts were meeting in a small room specifically designed for these kinds of quick, private meetings.

  “It’s getting out of hand,” the Director of Recovery said. “We are dangerously close to exposure.”

  “I don’t think we’re even near that point yet,” the DOP said.

  “Don’t you? What about that video that the networks are blasting all over the place today? Those weren’t military troops doing the shooting. Those were our people.”

  “Yes, they were. And even if they weren’t covered in bio-suits, there would be no possible way for the connection to be made back to us.”

  “What were they doing out there anyway?”

  “Their job.”

  The DOR didn’t look as if he liked the answer.

  “Is there a problem?” The DOP asked.

  “Given the safeguards of KV-27a, it just seemed…unnecessary.”

  The DOP looked at his colleague for a moment. “Are you worried about the deaths of two people?”

  “Of course not,” the other man said quickly. “There just seems to be a lot of…glitches with this particular operation.”

  “You’re right. There have been several glitches.”

  “Starting with KV-27a reaching the public in the first place!”

  “True, but I think that has actually been a benefit to us. As have these glitches. They’ve exposed areas of concern that are much better for us to know about now than later, don’t you think? If we had to do it all over again, I think I would have pushed for something like this to occur by design as opposed to by accident.”